Kolar, Jiri
Original Crumplage
1966. Crumpled paper collage, signed "JK 66" in green ink, bottom right. Mounted along top edge to board. 6 13/16 x 9 3/16 in. (173 x 249 mm). In mat and in frame, 14 x 16 1/2 in. (356 x 419 mm).

A striking original paper crumplage by innovative Czech poet, writer, painter and translator, Jiri Kolar (1914-2002). Crumplage is related to the collage process froissage that was developed by Czech artist Ladislav Novak. Often utilizing images and text culled from magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals, crumplages are created by crumpling, tearing, and folding the material at random, and then flattening and mounting them to form a new and abstract image. Here, Kolar used the print of an engraved battleship from a 19th-century German text, manipulating it to form this arresting image of the ship in mid-destruction. As Kolar explained in his 1991 book, Dictionary of Methods, "Crumplage washed over me on a huge wave of gesturalism during a period when the graphic artist Vladimir Boudnik was running his marathon in Bohemia fueled to the hilt by Explosionalism and structural prints. The first crumplages I made were monochrome, either white or black. Anyone can crumple wet paper, and if that doesn't work, all you need to do is toss a few magazine pages onto the sidewalk in the rain. The rain and the trampling of passersby or the tires of cars will do the trick. Believe me, I've tried this many times...The analogies to events in life and explosions of fate, which can 'crumple' a person so suddenly and profoundly that the consequences of such an inner tornado can never be smoothed or straightened out, convinced me that this technique of mine was indeed useful for gaining insight."

Provenance: Collection of Tonian Genstein Volk, Pennsylvania