Jiri Kolar

JIRI KOLAR (Protivin, Czech Republic, 1914 - Prague, 2002).
Untitled, 1992, from the "Suite Olympic Centennial".
Silkscreen on 270 grams Vélin d'Arches paper, copy E.A. 35/50.
Signed and justified by hand.
Measurements: 90 x 63 cm.

The Olympic Suite is composed of 50 lithographs and serigraphs chosen to represent various contemporary artistic trends. It was published to commemorate the first centenary of modern Olympism. The chosen artists work in very diverse movements and styles, from the hyperrealism of Antonio Lopez to the abstraction of Sol Lewitt, through abstract expressionism, the geometrism of Arden Quin, conceptual art, pop art, the new realism of Baldaccini and Rotella, or the new fauvism of Dokoupil, among others. Among the artists represented there are creators of great international renown, widely recognized by critics.

Born into a working-class family, Jiri Kolar moved to Prague in 1945, where he first worked as an editor and later devoted himself to poetry and the creation of collages. Kolar's language is influenced by surrealism and poetism (Czech avant-garde poetic movement), especially highlighting the production of "rollages", a technique consisting of laminating important works of art in strips to reconstruct them again according to a new optic. However, the arrival of the communists to power in Czechoslovakia prevented Kolar from freely exhibiting and publishing his works. In fact, in 1950 he was imprisoned due to the publication of a text called "Prometheus' Liver", written contrary to the mentality that prevailed at the time, closely linked to socialist realism. After a politically active period, Kolar emigrated to France, where he remained until the end of communism in 1989, recovering his Czech passport in 1992. Throughout his career as an artist, Jiri Kolar has held numerous exhibitions both in Europe and in the United States, the most important being the one held in 1881 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.