Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

Czech poet, artist, and political dissident Jiří Kolář made collage the focus of his work, often incorporating it into sculpture or applying it to found objects, as in this work. In the 1950s, when Kolář’s poetry came under the scrutiny of government censors in communist Czechoslovakia, he found collage to be a safer outlet for his passion for words. Chair, which is collaged with newspaper clippings, is an example of a collage technique that Kolář termed “chiasmage,” in which he affixed small scraps of paper to a three-dimensional object in rhythmic patterns. Through this process of transformation, language becomes secondary to pattern and aesthetics.