The Liver of Prometheus (Prometheova játra)

Abstract

About the Author: Jiří Kolář (1914–2002) was a graphic artist, poet, essayist and translator. He started his creative career in the early 1930s with surrealist poems. Kolář belonged to the left-oriented artistic and literary Group 42. Due to the Communist coup in 1948, he could not publish from 1949 to 1957. He spent eight months in prison in 1953 for the “subversive” manuscript of The Liver of Prometheus. At the end of 1950s, he gradually turned away from writing and concentrated on artistic work. His visual poetry and collages won him world fame with dozens of exhibitions. His entire work was exhibited in the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1975 and in other major Western museums of modern art. In the 1970s and 1980s, again, he could not publish except in samizdat or exile. In 1977, Kolář signed the human rights manifesto Charter 77 and while on a scholarship to West Berlin, the Czechoslovak government decided to force him to emigrate with no permission to return to Czechoslovakia. He lived in Paris from 1980 to 1989, and afterwards, he regularly travelled between Paris and Prague.