Jiří Šalamoun: Nic k zahození (Nothing to Throw Away)

Jiří Šalamoun belongs to the key figures of the Czech fine art of the late 20th century. Born in 1935 in Prague, he studied printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts and later typography and book illustration at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig in Germany. He became known mainly as an illustrator of numerous books, both for children and adults, created many film and theater posters, magazine illustrations and several animated films. Since the 1970s he has devoted himself also to lithography and painting. After the Velvet Revolution, he began teaching at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. In his work, he has been influenced by art brut, anonymous art, children's drawings, puppet theatre and broadside ballads prints. He has found great inspiration in ghost stories of old Prague, among which the Faust theme stands out significantly. Working in the field of book illustration and the interest in sequence art have lead to creating a number of author's books, which, given their nature, are the least known of his work to the general public. 

This monograph brings the widest cross-section of Jiří Šalamoun's work to date. Besides the book illustation, it includes a chronological view of his other work for film, theatre and magazines as well as his gallery work, consisting mostly of lithographs and authors books. A closer attention has been given to the sequence art and the Faust theme. 

The book can also be concieved as a kind of reader's diary of the second half of the 20th century, when typography and illustration as well as a number of translations from other languages reached a hign level in then Czechoslovakia, however limited due to the obvious restrictions of the time.

Art works by Jiří Šalamoun at KAVKA