Antonín Dufek Collection

The Study Room of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music houses the Antonín Dufek Collection, a library assembled from the estate of the Czech art historian and photography curator Antonín Dufek. The collection comprises 775 books and is fully accessible through the online catalogue of the University Library, where individual titles can be searched for and reserved. All books are located in the Study Room of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music on the second floor of Building P. They can be consulted on site and borrowed for one month, with the option of renewal.

Thanks to its thematic breadth, the collection is not only intended for the students of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, especially those from the Department of Intermedia Studies, but also for the students from the Faculty of Education and Faculty of Arts, notably in the fields of art history, aesthetics, visual culture, or cultural studies.

PhDr. Antonín Dufek, Ph.D.

* 30 November 1943, Brno
† 25 October 2023, Brno

PhDr. Antonín Dufek, Ph.D. Antonín Dufek fundamentally reshaped the perception of photography as a fully-fledged artistic discipline. He was among the very few Czech art historians whose influence extended beyond the Czech Republic.

In 1968, Dufek joined the Moravian Gallery in Brno as a curator in the Applied Graphics Department; at a time when photography still occupied a marginal position within museum institutions. Under his leadership, however, the photography collection developed systematically and gradually became widely renowned in its field, particularly due to its strong representation of interwar avant-garde photography. During this period, only a handful of institutions were actively collecting photography or maintained their own photography departments. Consequently, the Moravian Gallery’s photography collection ranked among the first of its kind in Europe.

Throughout his career, Antonín Dufek curated more than two hundred exhibitions and published numerous monographs and scholarly texts. He was also deeply committed to teaching, lecturing on the history of photography at secondary schools and universities in the Czech Republic and abroad. His international standing is reflected in his research residencies at institutions such as the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles or the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Art historian and lecturer Lukáš Bártl from the Department of Intermedia Studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music summarises Dufek’s significance for Czech photography: “Antonín Dufek was one of our most important historians of photography. He played a crucial role in establishing and shaping the photography collection of the Moravian Gallery in Brno and he authored a comprehensive history of Czech photography. Although much of his work took place during the normalisation era of the 1970s, he consistently sought to set his work within an international framework. As a curator at the Moravian Gallery, he maintained close contact with leading collections worldwide and systematically facilitated exchanges of exhibition catalogues and publications. This is what make his collection so unique and exceptional. Many of these titles cannot be found in any other collection in the Czech Republic and their donation has significantly enriched the Study Room of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Ostrava.”

Sources:

  1. BÁRTL, Lukáš. Portrét: k pětasedmdesátinám Antonína Dufka. Online. In: Kontexty. 10. Brno, 2018, s. 55-57. ISSN 1803-6988. Available Online. [cit. 2026-01-15].
  2. PhDr. Antonín Dufek, Ph.D. Online. Encyklopedie dějin Brna. 2024. Available Online. [cit. 2026-01-15].
  3. Kurátor Antonín Dufek: ke sbírce fotografií se dostal náhodou, zasvětil jí celý život. Online. Český rozhlas Brno. 2018. Available Online. [cit. 2026-01-15].
  4. Za českou fotku je ve světě stále třeba bojovat, říká historik umění Antonín Dufek. Online. Český rozhlas Vltava. 2023. Available Online. [cit. 2026-01-15].
  5. Výstavní intervence: Antonín Dufek – Zůstávám. Online. Moravská galerie. 2024. Available Online. [cit. 2026-01-15].
  6. Photography Source – Author: Tomáš Fassati – Own Work, CC BY-SA 4.0, wikimedia.org

Updated: 10. 02. 2026