COURAGE

connecting collections

Běla Kolářová worked with photography (photograms) and collage. Her interest in experimentation and found objects was, for a long time, less appreciated than the work of her husband Jiří Kolář. This has changed in recent years. Her works were exhibited for the first time in 1962 in Mánes, and then she joined the group Křižovatka and exhibited with them. Běla Kolářová, together with her husband, left Czechoslovakia in the late 1970s for Berlin, and then for Paris. In 1981, she came to Prague for a short visit, but the police did not allow her to return to her husband until 1985. Since 1999 she lived in Prague. She was autodidact.

Božena Komárková is an important representative of the Brno Protestant dissent. She was born on the 28^th of January, 1903, in Tišnov, but her studies brought her to Brno, where she stayed until the end of her life. After graduation, she studied Philosophy, History and Geography at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University. Professionally she worked most of her life as a secondary school teacher in several places in Moravia. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia, she joined an anti-Nazi resistance group: Obrana Národa, but in 1940 she was arrested and imprisoned until the end of the war. In 1945 she returned to Brno, where she continued her pedagogical activities. In autumn 1948, she was forced to change school because of ideologic reasons, then had to leave the profession as a teacher and became a librarian at the State Pedagogical Library, where she was released at the end of 1951. Since 1952, due to serious health problems caused by war prisoners, she had been paid as an invalidity pensioner.  

In addition to her pedagogical activities, Komárková obtained a doctorate degree at the beginning of 1948. The Habilitation theses was written during the next year, and defended in 1992, in Brno. Among Komárková´s works, the most important, belonging to the ‘Sekularizovaný svět a evangelium, Původ a významný lidských práv, Lidská práva’ (‘Origin and Significance of Human Rights’), where she reflected on the development of modern society and the inalienability of human rights from a Christian point of view. This trend was also evident in its efforts to revive the theological and ecclesiological foundations of the Českobratrské církve evangelické (Evangelical Church of the Brethren), within the New Reconstruction stream. The result of these activities is a book called Zásady Českobratrské církve evangelické (Principles of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren).

Božena Komárková represents the Protestant stream of cultural opposition. Already in the early 1950s, she organised secretive seminars for members of the abolished YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association). She joined these activities after the signing of Charter 77; her apartment became one of the most important centres of the Brno dissent, which was especially Christian-oriented.   She also published her texts in samizdat or in exile publishing houses.

Božena Komárková was awarded several times in her life for her dissent and intellectual work. In 1982 she received an honorary Doctorate of Theology at the University of Basel, in 1991 the Order of T. G. Masaryk, a year later the gold medal of Masaryk University, in 1993 the medal of Charles University too. She died on the 27^th of January, 1997, in Brno.

Tomasz Konart was born in 1955 in Warsaw. In the seventies and eighties, he actively participated in the neo-avant-garde movement, creating works in the field of film, video, installation, and photography. Particularly associated with the artistic communities of Łódź and Warsaw, he was a co-founder of the Group T and co-founder of the Gallery Mospan and Gallery P.O. Box 17.
In the years 1975-1980 Konart studied at the Lodz Film School; he was one of the founders of the Group T operating at the Lodz Film School since 1980. Earlier, in the years 1977-1978, Konart co-hosted the Mospan Gallery in Warsaw, and then in 1979, the P.O. Box 17 Gallery - both with Tomasz Sikorski. It was at the Mospan Gallery that the first individual Konart presentation took place - The Walk in 1977. The next individual exhibitions of Konart's works were held, among others in the Foto-Medium-Art Gallery in Wrocław, Workshop Dziekanka in Warsaw, Mała Galeria in Warsaw, Labirynt 2 in Lublin and Piwna 20/26 in Warsaw - small, original galleries and studios created by neo-avant-garde milieus.
In the 1990s, Konart emigrated to Canada, where in 1999 he started studying at the New Media Department of Ryerson University in Toronto. In addition to experimental film, video, and photography, he also practices net art. His works can be found in the collections of the Museum of Art in Łódź, the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Bureau of Art Exhibitions in Lublin and the New Museum in New York. Konart lives and works in Toronto and Berlin, constantly maintaining contact with the artistic establishment in Poland.

Sources:
Tomasz Konart, http://tomaszkonart.net/#!bio.

Paul Kondas (1900-1985) was an Estonian naive artist. He was a teacher by profession. In 1919, he took part in the Estonian War of Independence against Soviet Russia (1918-1920). From 1925 to 1941 he was a teacher and director at the Suure-Jaani elementary school. In 1941, he was forced to leave Suure-Jaani, because he refused to cooperate with the German occupying authorities. In 1945, by the time of the Soviet annexation, he was appointed director of the Viljandi high school for adults. In 1951, he was dismissed for political reasons. After that, he worked as a teacher at the Heimtali school. He retired in 1961 and devoted himself to painting, fishing, and his correspondence. He was too old and eccentric for the state to be interested in him.

István Konkoly (1930) is a Hungarian Roman Catholic priest and former bishop of Szombathely. He studied at a high school in Szombathely, and then he studied theology at the Pázmány Péter Theological Academy in Budapest. He became a priest in 1954 in Szombathely. Konkoly was a chaplain in Gyöngyösfalu, Rábagyarmat, and Jánosháza between 1955 and 1962. He completed his doctor of theology in 1960. In 1962–1963, he served as vice-pastor in Szőce. Between 1963 and 1972, he was secretary to the bishop of Szombathely. He became an agent of the political police in 1959 under the codename “Mátrai,” but most of his reports were of no use to the Ministry of the Interior. He became so passive in the 1970s that he was expelled from the network in 1977. In 1963, he was made secretary of the National Liturgic Committee and in 1987 he became the president of the organization. Between 1972 and 1987, he was the pastor in Gencsapáti. In 1986, the state security established a connection with him again, because in the following year he became the bishop of Szombathely. He led the Diocese of Szombathely until 2006.