Their joint exhibition has already been held once at the Slovak National Gallery, in 1997. It returns, then, almost thirty years later to the 'scene of the crime' – different, of course, and in different circumstances, shaped not least by the fact that both artists were still alive when that earlier exhibition took place, whereas today we can only look back on them in memory. Perhaps this fact will not give rise to anti-cultural rebellions...
The exhibition is drawn from two major art collections: the collection of Jan Kukal, a highly regarded collector in Slovakia, and the Czech-German private collection COLLETT Prague / Munich, based in Jirny near Prague. The work of Ladislav Novák is further complemented by a private collection in Novák's beloved Třebíč.
The exhibition at the SNG presents visual artefacts by both artists, whilst not overlooking the fact that both were equally men of letters, and so several of their poems also form part of the display. This is particularly fitting in the case of Jiří Kolář; after all, Kolář entered the Czech cultural scene as an acclaimed poet, only to dissolve his 'poetry', over time and through a certain evolution, into a visual feast.
