At the Kooperativa insurance company headquarters in Karlín, you can see paintings from its collection at individual thematic exhibitions. Kooperativa thus continued the pre-World War II period when it was customary for banks and insurance companies to build up their art collections.
This collection began in the early 1990s, at the impulse of one of the founders of Kooperativa, Vladimír Mráz. Today, the collection has more than 3,000 paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and other art objects.
The focus of the collection are works of art from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries by the most important Czech artists, including Mikoláš Aleš, Josef Mánes, Antonín Chittussi, František Kaván, Antonín Slavíček, Otakar Kubín, Václav Rabas, Václav Špála, Joža Uprka, Max Švabinský, Emil Filla, Josef Čapek, Toyen, František Muzika, and Jan Zrzavý.
Entry to the gallery is free.
By the way – the current CEO of Kooperativa Martin Diviš is not only an art lover but also a traffic pilot. He says that he did not enjoy the usual hobbies of managers – tennis or golf, so he fulfilled his childhood dream.
Today, he flies once a week, most often to Rome, Brussels, Paris, Copenhagen, or Amsterdam, and because he did not want to receive money for it, he gives his rewards to charity.
He says he has no problem combining flying with his job as CEO of an insurance company: “I fly in the morning and I’m in the office at 10 am, that’s when the others come back from breakfast. And it’s similar in the evening, I fly at 5 pm or 6 pm and I’m already in bed at around 10 pm.”
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