Plein air painting project in Blatno

THE LANDSCAPE OF BLATNO AND THE CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL ARCHANGEL THROUGH THE EYES OF A PAINTER  

The municipality of Blatno in the Ore Mountains, near Chomutov, organizes this year a plein-air painting workshop, which will be crowned by an exhibition opened at the 6th International Early Music Festival Kvetnov Music Days in the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Blatno.

The intention of the project is to let this place and its history speak not only through music, but also through painting..

Selected works will be published in the festival's documentary catalogue. The exhibition will run until 30 September and the artists will donate one of the smaller works to the archives of the municipality of Blatno.

Artistic guarantor of the project is German artist Bettina Zimmermann.

About the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Blatno
The dominant feature of the village of Blatno is the Church of St. Michael the Archangel built in 1782 by the Kadaň builder Jan Václav Kosch. When the municipality of Blatno took possession of it after 2000 in a very dilapidated state, practically all the original equipment was missing. In 2013, necessary repairs were made to the roof, but a complete reconstruction of the church seemed out of sight. Nevertheless, the church began to be used impromptu for community events, and thanks to the support of the Czech-German Future Fund, the church was incorporated into the festival events of the festival Kvetnov Music Days organized by the municipality in 2021. In the 1980s, the original valuable organ from the workshop of the famous Loket organist Ignaz Schmidt from 1782 disappeared. In the winter of 2022, the municipality received the incredible news that the organ, whose existence had been unknown for decades, was in the workshop of the Dresden organist Kristian Wegscheider, who had partially restored it. The municipality bought it from him the same year. The general enthusiasm for the return of the lost organ was the impetus for even more intensive use of the, albeit unrestored, church and for intensive work to raise funds for its full reconstruction. The restoration of the church's façade is currently being completed and a successful public collection for the adoption of the organ pipes is underway.