Korespondaz B+K

From summer 1986 until fall 1987, the renowned artist Jiri Kolar, an ‘old man’ (as he described himself), and young French writer Beatrice Bizot corresponded daily – he mailed her a collage, she wrote him a letter. Small collages, postcards, short letters, sometimes just a few sentences. But every single day. For Kolar, it was an attempt  to motivate and encourage a talented young woman to pursue her dreams. Little he knew when he proposed the exchange that it would actually change her path.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo of a catalog for ‘Korespondaz’, an exhibition at the National Gallery in Prague (thank you, Alena!).

An exceptional, generous man, Kolar nurtured creative potential and talent of young artists and even helped established artists out of creative crisis – by challenging them to engage into systematic creative work, bit by bit, persistently and continuously. Whether in writing, music or visual arts. Beatrice Bizot wasn’t the only one he encouraged by engaging into mail art. (He did the same with his wife Bela when they were forced by the Czechoslovak communist regime to live separated and he lived in emigration in France.) But, it was Beatrice whose future was influenced by Kolar’s proposal. Instead of becoming a journalist, she became a sculptor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After almost three decades, over 400 letter and 370 collages – daily thoughts expressed in the numerous forms of collages Kolar (then 72) invented and in letters written by Bizot (then 20) – were gathered in Prague at the National Gallery for a wonderful exhibition. Curators Anna Pravdova and Petr Pribyl came up with ‘Korespondaz’ (Correspondage) – a title for the exhibition inspired by Kolar’s terms for the many techniques of collage making he invented (in Czech ‘rolaz’, ‘chiasmaz’, ‘prolaz’, etc.).

When my dear friend Alena Laufrova sent me the catalog for the exhibition earlier this year, she and I were at the end of our first year of exchanging collages. The motives for our project Korespondaz A+K are slightly of a different nature, but that’s another story, for another post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of Beatrice Bizot’s sculptures.