Kolářová, Běla

Běla Kolářová (1923 Terezín – 2010 Prague)

A Grey Gramophone, 1962

black and white photograph, 265×230 mm, acquired 2006, Olomouc Museum of Art, inv. no. F 3998

The photograph by Běla Kolářová titled A Grey Gramophone was acquired through her retrospective exhibition held in Olomouc in 2006 titled Experiment, řád, důvěrnost: ženské rastry Běly Kolářové / Experiment, Order, Intimacy: The Feminine Patterns of Běla Kolářová. The exhibition displayed a set of works created with the use of a unique and non-standard photographic technique; an experimental technique which produced works of art without the use of a camera, purely in the darkroom. In A Grey Gramophone the author used a rotating light element that created a geometric trace on an artificial negative. Her work played an essential part in the formation of Czech conceptual art, which she promoted from the 1960s with her husband Jiří Kolář (1914–2002). Her photographs bear elements of the period’s constructivist tendencies. With their lightness and humour they incline towards neo-Dadaism, and by the choice of visual elements (hair, clips, make-up) they touch on feminist art.

Štěpánka Bieleszová