Museum devoted to king of Czech comics opens
The artistic style is unmistakable to Czech eyes: cowboys, aliens, machine gun-toting gangsters, stylish super cars and an abundance of scantily-clad, big-breasted women. With the opening of Kája Saudek Comics Museum off of Prague’s Wenceslas Square, the artist’s work will gain the increased international exposure that communist censorship and post-1989 commercialization prevented him from attaining.
“The museum is the first step of our initiative to introduce Saudek to a wider audience,” the artist’s daughter, Berenika Saudková, told Czech Position, adding that it will also serve as a litmus test for Saudek’s international reception.
“I believe he will be received in other countries as positively as he has been at home where the comic genre has never been considered art.”
The idea for the museum arose after Saudková decorated the interior of the rock club Batalion entirely in her father’s comic style. Three years later the museum has opened containing over 90 artworks as well as photographs of the artist.
The 76-year-old twin brother of internationally celebrated Czech photographer Jan Saudek, Karel ‘Kája’ Saudek’s aesthetic shows the powerful influence of American comics. Far from being mere adulation or imitation, though, Saudek injects more than his fair share of satirical wit into the images of muscular heroes and buxom babes. One of the funniest panels exhibited in the museum is a mock back-page comic advertisement which says, “If you read this motto you win!” (via Czech Position)
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