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Nostalgic Figuration

Publication at Catholic Theological Faculty, Faculty of Arts |
2016

Abstract

In the years 1962 to 1967 three young artists Jan Jedlička, Mikuláš Rachlík and Vladivoj Kotyza created works, which in their own eyes were linked by some kind of "common denominator", although otherwise they differed from one another in many ways, both personally and artistically. Vojtěch Lahoda called this special collection of related paintings, drawings, prints and photographs "Prague Fantastic Realism".

The nostalgia of the representatives of Prague Fantastic Realism poses a suggestive question: Can a subject feel nostalgic longing for something that does not lie in the past, something that has never happened?30 The time-space continuum of their works does not anchor the nostalgic feeling in a longing for something that once existed. It shifts the subject of nostalgia not only on the time axis between the past, the present and the future, but also deviates it in the direction of alternative realities and fictive times.

This invisible three-dimensional network defined not only the works of Jan Jedlička, Vladivoj Kotyza and Mikuláš Rachlík at that time, but also contained a complicated conglomerate of their feeling, relationships and directions at that time. The quoted common denominator is - nostalgic figuration.