My dissertation thesis seeks to explore some specific social aspects of the dialogue between traditional Chinese art and thinking and Czech art scene after the February1948, when the Communist party took power in former Czechoslovakia. I am mainly interested in the problematic of inspiration from traditional Chinese calligraphy and Daoist philosophy on Czech painting, visual poetry and literature in the 1950s and 1960s. I will argue that the appropriation of selected Chinese philosophical and artistic themes helped Czech artists, working under the communist repression, to express their innermost human emotions in relation to home, culture, freedom, and one's artistic and human destiny. The communist regime meant to many artists the end of their official artistic career. Life in seclusion outside the main political and social streams became for some of them an opportunity to display pent-up feelings of affinity with the life stories of the ancient Daoist thinkers. In this context, focus is primarily placed on an analysis of several distinctive visual and literary works by Czech leading artists of the period, especially on the selected works by the visual artists Emil Filla, Jiří Kolář, Vladimír Boudník, Jan Kotík or Zdeněk Sklenář and the novelist Bohumil Hrabal (1914 - 1997) and his world famous...

The objective of this thesis draws on my experience acquired during the internship in Galeria De Arte Servando in Havana, where I have been given the opportunity to learn about Cuban culture as well as to witness the restrictions and difficulties in gallery activities due to the communist government. The first part of the thesis focuses on historical facts highlighting the art exchange between Czechoslovakia and Cuba, a common part of running the state institution in the past. It was a common practice both in Havana´s House of Czechoslovak Culture and in the House of Cuban Culture in Prague. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, both houses were closed and the Czechoslovak-Cuban relations in art and culture have never been restored. The study subsequently discusses the concept and realization of the exhibition prepared in collaboration with Cuban curator Yenisel Osuna Morales. The aim of the thesis is to try to initiate a dialogue between two countries, Cuba and the Czech Republic (former Czechoslovakia), countries with many differences, and probably even estranged nowadays. However, their relations were warm before, and they could be in many ways an inspiration. The primary outcome of this thesis is the exhibition project aimed at the topic of censorship in independent art, its influence on gallery activities and freedom of artistic expression in Cuba. The selection of cuban artists carried out by curator Yenisel Osuna Morales represents the topic of pluriculturalism, migration and diaspora. By means of exhibition exchange, I would like to refer to the terminated friendship between Cuba and former Czechoslovakia in the field of art. The purpose of these exhibitions is not only to present Czech contemporary art in Cuba but also to present Cuban art in the Czech Republic without any restrictions.

The period after the February 1948 posed great changes for the cultural sphere, the groups and clubs were dissolved, artists who did not want to squeeze into the limits of socialist realism had no choice than to close themselves in the privacy of their homes and studios. After 1950, however, a group of friends around Jiří Kolář formed in Prague, who shared the same views on political and cultural development and, despite various artistic orientations, captured everyday experiences in pictures or texts. The thesis focuses on the friendship of Jiří Kolář, Vladimír Fuka, Eva Fuka, Zdeněk Urbánek, Jan Rychlík, Kamil LhoJan Hanč, Josef Schwarz-Červinka, Emanuel Frynta and others, and tries to portray this period of time, their mutual inspirations and relationships, and especially the extremely creative atmosphere, which was originated in this friendly circle. The thesis is based on diary entries, drawings, collages, poems and literary texts, which they created together and for each other in this unique, free and inspiring environment.