A fundraising event Auction for Fenix took place on January 16, 2020 in the Reduta Theater. Fifteen Brno schools donated their paintings for a good cause. ParaCENTRUM Fenix managed to raise a very generous sum of money for the physical therapy of clients with spinal cord injuries – CZK 237,700. The project partners were the National Theatre Brno and Auction House Zezula. The Dagmar and Václav Havel Foundation VIZE 97 took the exhibition and auction under its auspices.
“I am very happy that the first year of the Auction for Fenix was a success. Over 120 people attended the auction and we managed to raise 237 700 CZK. We will use the raised funds to provide physical therapy to clients with spinal cord injuries, as it is a very expensive item for us. There are over a hundred clients who come to us 2-3 times a week to do their physical therapy, so we welcome any resource that will help us finance this increasingly sought-after service,” said Michal Odstrčil, our organization’s director.
ParaCENTRUM Fenix is a non-profit organization that provides services to more than 500 clients. We help clients with spinal cord injuries and their loved ones get back to their active lives. It was Tomáš Zezula from the Auction House Zezula (which has been one of the most successful auction houses on the Czech market for almost 30 years) who came up with the idea to reach out to children from art schools. 15 out of 40 addressed primary and secondary schools in Brno had eventually joined the project and we received more than 350 paintings.
The evaluation and final selection of paintings for the auction was undertaken by a jury of experts – renowned Czech show business personalities and leading gallerists: nobleman František Kinský, Czech songwriter and producer Michal Horáček, Czech-American gallerist Katherine Kastner from Hunt Kastner Gallery, art director of Fait Gallery Denisa Kujelová, and Lucia Lettenmayerová, founder of the private gallery COLLETT Prague | Munich. All the jury members are highly erudite when it comes to contemporary art, which they had proven during the evaluation process as well – within 3 weeks, they managed to select the 72 most interesting ones out of 359 paintings received. All these 72 paintings were successfully auctioned. The most expensive item sold at the auction was a painting by an 8-year-old girl, auctioned for CZK 29,800.
