About this Item
Original exhibition poster by Jiri Kolar. 45 x 77 cm, in very good condition. Jiri Kolar (24 September 1914, Protivín 11 August 2002, Prague) was a Czech poet, writer, painter and translator. His work included both literary and visual art. Kolar was born in Protivín on September 29, 1914, in a working-class environment. His father was a baker and his mother a seamstress, and he himself trained early in life as a cabinet maker (which cost him a finger). He later changed trades several times, working as a construction worker, security guard, and bartender, among other jobs. In 1943 he became a full-time writer while living and working in Kladno. He moved to the capital Prague in 1945 to work as an editor of the publishing house Dru stvo Dílo. Kolar joined the Communist Party in 1945 but left the Party the same year.[citation needed] Because of his critical stance towards the regime he was not allowed to publish after communists took control in Czechoslovakia in 1948. He married Bela Helclová in 1949. When in 1952 police found his manuscript, Prométheova játra, in the property of Václav Černý he was arrested and spent several months in prison. Kolar was one of a group of several artists, among whom Václav Havel, Václav Cerný, Jan Vladislav and Josef Hir al, who met and discussed in Café Slavia, both during the period leading up to the Prague Spring when the communist regime grew more permissive, and in the period of normalization after the Prague Spring. Kolár's wild behavior lost him former friends (e.g. he threw coffee on Josef Hir al's shirt and had his soda water poured on him in return). The failure of the Prague Spring in 1968 brought Kolár and his work into disrepute again. In 1970 cerebral apoplexy stiffened his right arm. Kolár signed Charta 77 and while on a scholarship to West Berlin, the government decided to force him to emigrate; he was therefore not allowed to return home. From 1980 on he lived in Paris. After 1989 he visited his homeland more and more often. In 1999 Kolár injured his spine and he spent his last years in a Prague hospital. Seller Inventory # 25405
Contact seller
Report this item
