František Matoušek’s retrospective exhibition is entitled Pictures and a Bouquet and is accompanied by a monograph of the same name, a presentation of his 30-year artistic career. His studies at the Academy of fine arts in Prague began relatively late, in 1993, but he swiftly established himself at the top of the contemporary art scene. He and his fellow-classmates in Jiří David’s studio founded Luxsus, one of the most substantial groups of the 1990s. It was also at this time that he made his initial images from ripped denim. He has not abandoned this original technique to this day, and indeed over time it has become his personal signature, further emphasised some time ago by his adoption of the artistic pseudonym Francis de Nim. In 1999 Matoušek completed the Academy with a collection of paintings in acrylic, in which he dealt with the world of art and his place in it, again with a (self-)ironic distance. If in these paintings he came up with original themes inspired by contemporary visuality, after graduating he surprisingly turned to the thoroughly traditional genres of portraiture, and principally landscapes. He also went back to using denim, now in combination with painting. New York, which he visited for the first time in 2001, was crucial for him, and he proceeded to go for extended stays there nearly every year. A while later he discovered another place that played a similarly noteworthy role in his work — Cala Benirrás, a beach on the island of Ibiza. Another favourite topics of his are music and his family, which are the subject of the final rooms of the exhibition.