Olbram Zoubek celebrates the spirit of Vladimír Holan, in the presence of his statues in the courtyard of the Celetna Theatre. An invocation uniting two masters of twentieth-century art.

Olbram Zoubek was born in 1926 in Prague, where he completed his studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in 1952. He “disappeared” in 1969, through his sculpture of Jan Palach, only to reappear in 1989, recognized as the natural heir of Alberto Giacometti. His statue “Muse“ is central to the design and theme of this year’s Festival. Olbram Zoubek lives in Prague.

Vladimír Holan was born in 1905 in Prague, and remains a legend in European poetry. He published over twenty volumes of poetry, four prose works and an exhausting array of translations After 1948, he was accused of “decadent formalism” and assumed a distinct silence until A Night with Hamlet was published in 1963. An illustrated, bilingual edition of A Night with Hamlet will be published by Academia in honour of Vladimir Holan who died in Prague in 1980.