One of the backbone themes of artist Jiří Sozanský's book Valdice / Condemned to Nonexistence is the complex search for a relationship - or rather a passing - with people who have gone through the experience of political imprisonment, especially in the 1950s. After November 1989, Jiří Sozanský, as one of the few artists of his generation, came into living contact with these people, grouped at that time already in the Confederation of Political Prisoners (KPV). He put his art at the service of commemorating their fates - most significantly in the realization of the memorial to political prisoners, installed in front of the prison in Valdice in 2009. In addition to the pictorial section, which is central to the large book and contains not only photographs of Sozansky's works but also photographic documentation of their creation, you will also find a number of personal stories of people associated with the Valdice prison, documents and portraits of others, facsimiles of personal correspondence, sentences and court files.
The historian Petr Blažek and the archivist Alena Šimánková also contributed to the book with a study of the tragic life of the deputy director general of the National Bank of Czechoslovakia and political prisoner Miloš Horna, who died in Valdice in 1958. He was buried in the prison cemetery, which was later destroyed. His remains - as in the case of other deceased prisoners - have not been exhumed to date, with a few exceptions. Literary historian Jan Wiendl published in the book an excerpt from an interview with his father František Wiendl, a participant in the Second and Third Resistance. He spent ten years in communist prisons. After 1989, František Wiendl was involved in the KPV. The historian Jan Kalous contributed a foreword and a study of the Valdice prison as a place of suffering for political prisoners. The book by artist Jiří Sozanský was published jointly by the Museum of Memory of the XXth Century and Symposion.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA OF THE BOOK
Title: Valdice / Condemned to non-existence
Authors: Jiří Sozanský, Petr Blažek, Alena Šimánková, Jan Wiendl, František Wiendl, Jan Kalous
Publisher: Museum of Memory of the XXth Century, Symposion
ISBN: ISBN 978-80-908765-4-5
Description: 1x book, paperback, 204 pages, Czech
Dimensions: 29,7 × 28,6 cm
Issue: 2023 (1st edition)