Ladislav Novak (1925 - 1999)

he also published under the pseudonym Ladislav Hadlíz, he was a Czech painter and writer.
He was born into the family of the co-owner of the jirchárna in Třebíč. In 1941 he became a member of the local surrealist circle. In 1945 he entered the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, where he studied Czech and history, graduating in 1950 with the diploma thesis Rhyme and Assonation in the work of Vítězslav Nezval.


He was a leading Czech representative of surrealism. He also excelled as a poet, writing concrete and phonic poetry. In his artistic expression, he is the author of a specific technique called froassage. From the mid-fifties he worked in the amateur theater in Třebíč, between 1957 and 1958 he began to devote himself to specific poetry, and from 1962 to devote himself to phonic poetry.


Since 1970, he has not been allowed to publish publicly, so he has published in samizdat literature, for example, books Z Receptáře or Receptář have been published or he has published in the anthologies Greetings to Jaroslav Seifert, Zima, Pohledy 1 or Na střepech volnosti.
From the 1960s he also worked as a painter, exhibiting since 1965, both in Czechoslovakia and abroad (eg France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, USA, Italy, Spain, ...). He was primarily engaged in fly fishing, alchemy, veronage and froassage. From 1962 he devoted himself to alchemy, and from 1963 he devoted himself to topological drawing and froassage.


In the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote text instructions for happenings and organized several events in the natural environment. In the 1980s, he devoted himself primarily to fro-massage, but from the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, he devoted himself to ink, calling the technique veronage. In 1999, a cycle of torn roses was created, as well as several topological drawings.