Běla Kolářová

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Český Krumlov, Egon Schiele Art Centrum, Běla Kolářová, 20 September 2003 - 2 May 2004

Exhibition catalogue Běla Kolářová, Český Krumlov: Egon Schiele Art Centrum, 2003, pp.118-119 illustrated

The darker radiogram: There are pinholes in the upper left and lower right corners. There is some skinning to the right edge of the print. There are minor surface scratches visible in raking light only. The work is attached to its mount along the corners. Held in a white wooden frame behind glass. Unexamined out of frame. The lighter radiogram: There are pinholes in the upper left and lower right corners. There is a spot of foxing in the lower left. There are minor surface scratches visible in raking light only. The work is attached to its mount along the corners. Held in a white wooden frame behind glass. Unexamined out of frame.
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The works in this rare collection of photographs and assemblages by Czech artist Běla Kolářová date from 1956-1969, spanning what is widely acknowledged to be her best decade. Self-taught, she first began working with a camera in the mid-1950s, however in the early 1960s her practice grew away from images produced by a camera to photograms, in which she explored the process of image making though use of darkroom experiments.

Before the war similar techniques had been developed by Man Ray, however Kolářová’s work represents a new departure for its focus on the intimate and personal. Photographs of her own hair (lots 260-262) are acts of self-reference as she captures on paper small fragments or traces of herself. At the same time, the avant-garde is a driving principle throughout her oeuvre especially with regard to form. In Radiograms of a Circle (lot 253) which echoes geometric constructivism of the 1930s, movement of light is captured by attaching photographic paper to a rotating device.

For Kolářová conventional photography was not suited to capturing the small bits and pieces of her everyday life that she called ‘the litter of civilization’. As she explained: ‘Their diversity and quaint forms should yield something more than […] the camera register. […] Their authenticity will be best preserved if they are projected with the help of light directly onto the photographic paper without the intermediary of a camera’. Later she started to make assemblages out of these same objects: paperclips, poppers, needles, nails (lots 255 and 257).

Běla Kolářová’s place in 20th century European art history has been reassessed in recent years. Her work has been acquired by major museums and included in internationally, critically acclaimed exhibitions, such as the Adventures of the Black Square at the Whitechapel Gallery (London, 2015); and Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960-1980, at MoMA (New York, 2016).