COURAGE

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Jan Seidl is a historian and translator. In his research he focuses on the persecution, everydayness and history of the queer community in the modern history of the Czech lands. He works as an assistant professor at the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University and also as a translator. He is also a member of the Czech Literary Translator’s Guild. He is a co-founder and a leading figure of Society for Queer Memory. Jan Seidl is the author (or co-author or editor) of several publications focusing on the history of sexual minorities in the Czech Lands from 1867 to the present, and of a popular guide to the history of queer Prague.

Poet and translator Jaroslav Seifert is one of the most important Czech writers. His comprehensive poetic work went through a complicated internal evolution, as did the author’s approach to communism. Seifert’s first poems were published in newspapers and magazines in 1919, his first collection of poems, “Město v slzách”, was published two years later. During the 1920s Seifert became an important representative of the Czechoslovak artistic avant-garde. He became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and later started contributing to the party’s newspaper, Rudé právo. However, he was expelled from the party in 1929 because of his protest against its bolshevization. He worked as a journalist for social-democratic newspapers in the 1930s. In the 1950s he fully committed himself to writing poetry, which was criticized by communist dogmatists. His “de-Stalinization” speech, given on the Congress of Czechoslovak Writers in 1956 criticizing the development of cultural politics after 1948, mostly in relation to non-conforming writers and arrested authors, became well-known. In the 1960s, Seifert, holder of the “National Artist” title since 1966, took part in the reform of communist system and efforts to establish an autonomous writers’ organisation in 1968 and 1969. He therefore became a chairman of the newly established Czech Writers’ Association in 1969. However, the Association was dissolved a year later because it refused to stand with the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies. In the 1970s, Seifert’s work was published only sporadically in re-editions. Although he was among the firsts to sign the Charter 77, the communist regime could not ignore such a well-known writer and allowed his poems to be published from the beginning of the 1980s by official publishers. Seifert’s work was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1984. While the world media informed its citizens of Jaroslav Seifert being awarded the Nobel Prize, Czechoslovak media almost did not mention it. The acknowledgement, however, led to increased demand of Seifert’s work in exile publishing houses. To honour Jaroslav Seifert, the Charter 77 Foundation established the “Jaroslav Seifert Prize” in Stockholm in 1986 – the first prize winner was Slovak writer Dominik Tatarka.

Zbyněk Sekal was a Czech sculptor, painter and translator. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941 for his involvement in an illegal communist youth group and imprisoned in the concentration camps in Terezín and Mauthausen until the end of the war. He began studying at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague in 1945, though he did not complete his studies and worked as a press agent and later as an editor at Svoboda publishing house. At first he devoted himself mainly to painting and then from the mid-1950s to sculpture – the focal point of his interest was the figure, particularly the bust and head portrayed in an expressive manner. He lived in Bratislava from 1953–1958, working as a translator. He exhibited his work with the group Máj 57 (May 57). 1965 saw his first solo exhibition at the Václav Špála Gallery. After the Soviet occupation in 1968, he first of all emigrated to Berlin and Dusseldorf, then in 1970 he settled permanently in Vienna. He taught at the Academy of Art in Stuttgart from 1972 to 1974. In 1984 he received the City of Vienna Prize for sculpture.

Jan Sekera was an art historian and gallerist. From the 1960s until 1987 he was the head of the Benedikt Rejt Gallery. Sekera was never politically active. He was the author of the collection system and used his wits to find ways for the gallery to purchase unofficial art even after 1968. Sekera describes how he composed committees in order to make the purchase of unofficial artists possible. An example of his unorthodox approach is how he was able to move money designated for road repairs into an art fund. In the 1990s, he became the head of České muzeum výtvarných umění (Czech Museum of Fine Arts).