From the Božena Němcová series

The National Gallery Prague’s Collection of Prints and Drawings owns a representative corpus of works by Jiří Kolář. Alongside his chiasmages on a wooden board called The History of Nothing and The Death of a Bobbin-Lace Maker, these are bodies of collages, with the Božena Němcová series being the last acquisition received from the artist in 1999. In this extensive corpus, the artist treat in a great many aesthetic variations with a reproduction of the painting made in 1845 by Josef Václav Hellich. Appearing throughout the series are elements of Kolář’s unique creative process that include destruction, multiplication and construction. The series suggests the artist’s transition from verbal to visual art, and is an example of the transposition of literary means into the visual medium, as well as diverse collage-making methods.