Artist Michal Škapa has completed a new mural for commercial real estate developer CTP Invest. The huge artwork adorns a wall of the CTPark Prague Airport building in Kněževes, adjacent to Václav Havel Prague Airport, from where the work can be seen. The painting is inspired by nature, which is watched over by an eye at the centre of the painting on the wall. Measuring an impressive 350 metres by 15 metres, it covers an area of 5,000 square metres, making the mural the largest artwork in the country and one of the largest in the world.
In 2017, the company announced the international CTP Art Wall competition, in which more than 200 artists from all over Europe submitted projects. CTP invited them to decorate the walls of its industrial buildings in Humpolec and Prague. For more than two years, the Humpolec building, near the D1 motorway, has featured a mural inspired by fauna and flora and designed by the Belgian artist Dzia. In contrast, the CTPark Prague Airport hall did not acquire its final appearance, with a giant work of art, until May this year.
“We like to work with young people. We relish the opportunity to offer space to create artworks on the expansive walls of our properties. Art on the walls of industrial buildings surprises people. They react very positively to it,” says Remon Vos, founder and CEO of CTP Invest.
Another mural has just been completed in Plzeň, in cooperation with the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art of the University of West Bohemia. The company wants to promote public art on these unexpected “canvases” (such as the walls of industrial buildings) elsewhere in the Czech Republic and in other countries where the firm operates. CTP has already launched a similar competition in Hungary and is now looking for an artist to brighten up the wall of CTPark Budapest West. The firm also has plans for art on industrial buildings in Romania.
Supporting art has long been a policy of CTP, which has worked with Michal Škapa on several occasions. In addition to the largest painting, at Prague Airport, the artist’s work for CTP includes images on the façade of the preserved boiler house at the Vlněna site in Brno, where CTP Invest is constructing a hi-tech office complex. At Vlněna, modular units on the construction site and the chimney of one of the buildings also served as canvases for Michal Škapa. At the CTP Invest headquarters in Humpolec, in addition to the giant mural by the Belgian artist Dzia, there are other large-format paintings adorning the walls and ceilings. The company commissioned artist Marek Čihal to create paintings and sculptures at the IQ Ostrava building, at CTPark in Humpolec, and at the Spielberk in Brno. A project involving neon walls is in the pipeline for CTPark Prague East, by the D1 motorway.
