Years in the Days of Czech Art 1945–1957

Maria Klimešová's narrative pictorial monograph reflects in thirteen chapters artistic phenomena, thematic and opinion circles, personalities and events that create an image of the period between 1945 – 1957 and signify the fundamental values ​​of Czech art of the second half of the 20th century.

At the same time, it is divided into two basic time stages, the first division of which represents the political coup in 1948 and its consequences in Czech culture, the second the XX. Congress of the CPSU and its criticism of Stalinism. Readers can thus observe how artists first reacted to the disillusionment resulting from the experience of war and the breakdown of the classical procedures of pre-war modernism, how they later faced the liquidation of the intellectual and creative forces of society and how they took advantage of the climate of greater ideological tolerance after 1956. The panorama of prominent personalities unites them into one whole the work of the emerging post-war generation with key artists of the pre-war art scene – Emil Filla, Jan Zrzavy or Alén Diviš. The book mainly presents free art – painting, sculpture, drawing, collage, graphics and photography. Among the dozens, we can find authors such as Andrej Bělocvětov, Václav Boštík, Vladimír Boudník, Pavel Brázda, Libor Fára, Miroslav Hák, František Hudeček, Josef Istler, Čestmír Kafka, Jiří Kolář, Jan Křížek, Jan Lukas, Mikuláš and Emily Medkov, Zdenek Palcra, Robert Piesen, Stanislav Podhrázský, Bohuslav Reynek, Zbyňek Sekal, Zdeňko Sklenář, Josef Sudek, Josef Šíma, Václav Tikal, Jiří Toman, Toyen and many other, often unjustly neglected artists.