01 Painting, PORTRAIT OF A LADY, with Footnotes. #74

Jirí Kolár (1914 - 2002)

Four portraits, dated 1969

Oil on canvas

130 x 94 cm

Private collection

Jiří Kolář  (24 September 1914, Protivín – 11 August 2002, Prague) was a Czech poet, writer, painter and translator. His work included both literary and visual art.

Kolář was born in Protivín on September 29, 1914 in a working-class environment. He trained early in life as a cabinet maker. 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 Družstvo Dílo. Kolář joined the Communist Party in 1945 but left the Party the same year. Because of his critical stance towards the regime he was not allowed to publish after communists took control in Czechoslovakia in 1948. When in 1952 police found his manuscript, Prométheova játra, he was arrested and spent several months in prison. 

Kolář was one of a group of several artists 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.

The failure of the Prague Spring in 1968 brought Kolář and his work into disrepute again. In 1970 cerebral apoplexy stiffened his right arm. 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 Kolář injured his spine and he spent his last years in a Prague hospital. More on Jiří Kolář

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