Down at the bottom of the hill from which rises the castle in Prague, the Wallenstein Riding School is located on the perimeter of the garden of the early Baroque palace constructed in the 17th century for Albrecht of Wallenstein by Italian architects Andrea Spezza and Nicolo Sebregondi.  Being a riding school, the building has a large and tall column-free space, which today provides a spacious flexible gallery for the National Gallery in Prague to hold special exhibitions, connected to adjacent rooms which are free from sunlight and provide intimate display areas for sensitive work such as drawings and prints while, visitors can glimpse the formal gardens of the Palace (now housing the Senate, the Upper House of the Czech Republic) through the glass doors of the entrance and reception area.

Currently on show is a fascinating exhibition covering the entire career of Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957), one of Czechoslovakia’s greatest modern artists, showing how his career developed from his early work which is quite traditional in style to his later focus on vibrant geometry, energy and abstraction and includes both large paintings in the tall room and small studies, prints and drawings in the adjacent rooms connecting into it.  Kupka spent much of his later life in France, which is reflected in the number of paintings on loan from the Pompidou Centre in Paris and his work was included in the auction ‘The Eye of the Architect’ at Christie’s in London earlier this year .