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COLLECTOR National
Gallery in Prague The exhibition is held under the auspices of Jan Kasl, Mayor of Prague
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Kamil Lhoták,
Portrét Jiřího Koláře / Portrait of Jiří Kolář, 1947
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The
exceptional character of Jiří Kolář’s personal collection is, in
large measure, the result of a selection of artwork that documents the
origins of individual artistic efforts as much as several collective
tendencies. Kolář has, as a collector, never concentrated on acquisition
of a mass of property of more or less evident value. The authors and work
were selected only according to his own captivation by the given theme or
artistic personality. For his entire life, Jiří Kolář has maintained,
both as artist and as collector, an existential bond with experimentation.
It might therefore have seemed logical to start from this feature when
designing the exhibition and to arrange it around a straightforward
chronology, as the majority of authors represented in it turned more or
less radically against official trends and contemporary fashions. Given the personality of the collector, however, it ultimately seemed more informative to arrange it round the individual stages in Kolář’s life, since these reflect social events, his own activity as an artist linked up with his collecting interests, and his friendly or professional contacts with some of the artists represented in the collection. Mutual exchanges, gifts, commissions, purchases at auctions, in second-hand bookshops, antique shops, purchases from estates, purchases as a way of saving works condemned to oblivion or destruction. All these and probably yet other methods by which Kolář extended his collection naturally fell into several smaller subdivisions: In the Circle of Group 42; Experiment, act, concept; Vladimír Boudník; Ladislav Novák; Jiří Kolář the collector; The National Gallery Collection in Prague a Paris Exile.
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Kamil Lhoták, Geometři
/ Geometers, 1943
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In the Circle of Group 42 The
beginnings of the collection date back to 1937, when Jiří Kolář
entered the Prague art scene, first with an exhibition of collages at E. F.
Burian’s and then by joining Group 42. The personal dedications on
the first donated drawings and prints confirm Kolář’s rapid
involvement in artistic life and his natural ability to establish friendly
contacts even with artists of other generations. His first
acquisitions were mainly friendly gifts and exchanges for poems dedicated
not only to Group colleagues, but also for example to František Tichý.
After the war the collection, in which members of Group 42 were already
well represented, grew with the addition of works by Josef Šíma. Kolář’s
group collection reflects the lively history of the founding of Group 42,
its survival during the war years and disintegration in 1948. Presence of
several artists continues after the Group 42 circle and into the late
Fifties and early Sixties. |
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Vladimír Burda, Prométheovo
pokolení /
Descendents of Prometheus, 1968
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Experiment, action, conceptExperiment, action, concept Most akin to Jiří Kolář interests were, understandably, literary experiment, yet he was able to recognize, and moreover value, experimental daring even in artistic methods and tendencies that he never employed. Kolář has always opposed experimentation for its own sake, one not grounded in original thought and satisfied merely with the provocative gesture. His basic conviction is that "art, however free it may be, still has its laws and its responsibilities, not only toward human fates, but towards itself". Several names occurring in the collection are those linked to the earliest tendencies towards abstraction in Czech and worldwide art. The section intended for experimental, action and conceptual art concentrates on those artist who strove to renew the possibilities of communication, offering the viewers and participants of actions a new experience of a transformed reality and making use of non-artistic means to break through quotidian expectations. |
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Vladimír Boudník,
Strukturální grafika / Structural print, 1960
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Vladimír
Boudník To
date around 88 Boudník prints have been found in the Kolář collection,
and this represents the largest number of works by any single artist in
the collection. Although the whole set was originally probably even larger,
even in its current form it provides an unusually clear overview of the
most striking phases of Boudník’s work. It
is worth noting that Jiří Kolář had a precise sense of which were
Boudník’s finest works – his collection contains both key large
structural prints, experimental overprints on reproductions using the
artists’ own plates and some rare prints. Kolář even provided the
impetus for the birth of some of these works himself (Derealizations), and
often gave Boudník financial assistance by buying him new print sheets. In
1958 Jiří Kolář was undoubtedly primarily taken by the authentic,
stylistically unencumbered character of Boudník’s action prints.
He too was an artist who always stuck to his own principles and in the
later 1950s started to develop one of his numerous innovative approaches.
It was in their inner freedom, and in the tension between the rawness of
Boudník’s action approaches and Kolář’s sober ironic view of
cultural tradition, that the innovative spirit of these two
psychologically so contrasting artists came together and interacted in
the1950s. |
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Ladislav Novák, Poezie /
Poetry, 1962
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Ladislav
Novák At
the beginning of the 1960s, a creative figure not confined by written
poetry, as Novák was, formed the natural partner for Kolář. Both
artists soon came to realize that they were violating the frontier long
assumed to separate verbal and visual arts with very similar approaches
and methods. Over several years, their acquaintance grew into an
intensive working friendship of repeated visits and exchanges of artwork,
mutually sharing examples of their newest discoveries. Examination
of the ensemble of work defined by the period of Kolář’s collection
reveals a startling quantity of ideas developed in collaboration. Indeed,
the common utilization and refinement of new relations between image and
text occurred with such immediacy that it now is frequently difficult to
determine the original authorship of individual impulses. During this
intensive period, both artists likewise formed a store of inspiration that
served them for several years to come. |
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František Kupka,
Abstrakce, kolem 1930 / Abstraction, c. 1930
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Jiří Kolář the Collector “You
know about my love for pictures...” wrote Jiří Kolář in 1936. At
present, when the very word “collage” evokes the name of Kolář, it
would hardly appear necessary to cite reasons for or explanations of his
lifelong interest in contemporary artistic activity. Kolář’s
receptivity to various manifestations of urban folklore, to poster,
caricatures, illustrations, advertising designs, artifacts verging on
kitsch, and indeed to perhaps all artistic experiments, has understandably
determined the breadth of his collection and the wide spectrum of its
authors. The quality of the work varies widely, from unique items not to
be found elsewhere to second-rate printed matter and half-amateur
donations from friends. One reason for their preservation in Kolář’s
lifelong, complexly layered, and partially deliberately conceived
collection may be a remembrance of a personal meeting or a particularly
difficult period of life. Kolář’s collection casts light not only on individual interests and knowledge, but also on art as a social activity, and it also extends the range of projects that offer, at least in outline, some comparison between art created in the Czech Lands and world art. With his legendary ability to stimulate aesthetic originality, especially at times when it was continually repressed by the authorities, Kolář always emphasised the need for the artist to make his own discoveries and develop his own creative self-confidence. Kolář himself used every opportunity to visit foreign artists, gallery directors and theorists in Prague, and later on his trips abroad, in order to obtain information and establish the contacts important both for him and the other artists of whose unique value he was convinced. Jiří Kolář helped and supported not only young artists at the beginning of their careers, but also his own forgotten colleagues whose independent work had been threatened by the repressive conditions. He helped them by buying their works and generally expressing an interest. |
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Karel Malich, Boogie,
1960
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Radek Kratina, Variabily
/ Varibles, 1970 |
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Josef Šíma, Podivuhodné
odpoledne / Miracolous Afternoon, 1932
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The Collection of the National Gallery in Prague During
the Jiří Kolář stay in Paris in 1980 the period of his exile in France
begins. By verdict of the District Court in Prague Jiří Kolář was then
convicted in absentia for the criminal act of deserting his country and
the National Gallery was summoned to comment upon the attached list of
works that were transferred into state ownership. The Gallery confirmed
its interest in the entire proposition and thus acquired its present-day
collection. The collection was made complete with the purchase of works
offered by B. Kolářová before her departure to Paris, in order to
redeem and get back into ownership at least part of the original
possessions. Jiří Kolář legalized the transfer via a gift contract in
the 1990’s. The collection at the National Gallery is a smaller variation of Kolář’s entire collection, because it illustrates through individual works all of its periods and actually documents all of Kolář’s acquisition approaches as well. On the other hand some of the artists are represented only in this reduced selection and were therefore missing in previous chapters or were mentioned only superficially, although they often meant a lot to Kolář personally as well as artistically and were markedly presented in his collection. |
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Aurélie Nemours,
Face,
1971
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Parisian Exile The
final part of the collection of Jiří Kolář contains works acquired
during a stay in Berlin on stipendium, which turned into permanent
emigration to France. Kolář’s previous acquisition approaches repeat
themselves once again. Kolář`s collecting period in Paris focused
especially on geometric abstraction, minimalism, neoconstructivism and
kinetic art. The artists of these new acquisitions did not exclude names
mentioned in the previous chapter. Kolář’s Parisian studio was visited
in the 1980’s not only by Czech artists living in exile, but also
friends from Czechoslovakia on occasion. While in Paris Jiří Kolář visited not only a number of art openings and exhibitions, but regularly attended markets and annual bazaars in individual quarters. On these trips he would sometimes discover among the street offers of gallery stands some valuable prints or work on paper. The most significant purchase was the acquisition in 1985 of a painting by Antonín Slavíček Motif from Kameničky, 1904. |
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