Kolář Jiří 1914–2002

Breathing in Memories, 1976

collage, assemblage, box, 51 × 30 cm, signed on the reverse Jiří Kolář 76 BREATHING IN A MEMORY

Jiří Kolář has been slowly coming to his most important practices since the 1940s. years. From the beginning he applied the method of the diary. He collected motifs that and then used them when the idea matured. However, most of his own techniques ...was between the late '50s and the second half of the '60s. Their predecessors were confrontation, reportage and found collage, in which he arranged reproductions cut from magazines according to certain relationships and with them related rules. He once said that the word had lost its original meaning for him at a certain period and that it had disintegrated because it had been abused. He created what he called the obvious poetry, which he said was any poetry that wasn't expressed in words. He was also always concerned with the intermingling of different eras of art history. He linked for example, motifs from Baroque paintings with paintings by the great masters of the 20th century. The principles he developed in his written poetry he also used in his visual expression. In doing so he did not rely only on strict order, but also naturally applied poetic imagination and playfulness. It must be stressed that, thanks to his discoveries of this period and his inexhaustible inventiveness made him for a long time one of the most influential personalities in this country and in Europe. He maintained contacts with many other artists from abroad and is represented in many public and private collections in this country, France, Germany, Italy and the United States, Finland, Poland, Slovakia,... An attempt to affect the multiplicity and multilayeredness of reality and the desire to make art out of anything are the inner premises of Jiří Kolář's development.