Viktor Kolář

Viktor Kolář (born 7 September 1941) is a Czech photographer. Along with Jindřich Štreit, Kolář is considered one of the most important exponents of Czech documentary photography.

Early life and education

Kolář was born in 1941 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. His father was a documentary filmmaker and Ostrava’s principal photographer, owner of a photographic studio.

In 1953, Kolář began taking photographs, and studied the work of photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson. From 1960 to 1964 he did teacher training at the Pedagogical Institute in Ostrava. working in the molybdenum mines and in the nickel smelters in Manitoba. Moving into photography, from 1971 to 1973, he documented shopping malls in Montreal, exhibiting the work in the Optica Gallery, Montreal. As a former emigrant, he was interrogated by police on several occasions and, distrusted by the state, was eventually unable to work as a photographer. Instead, during that period of "normalization", he worked as a laborer in steelworks, while covertly documenting the Ostrava Region with his camera. From 1975 to 1984, he worked as a stage technician at the Petr Bezruč Theatre. In 1985, Kolář again worked as a freelance photographer and in 1991 won the Mother Jones International Photography Award.

and write that from as early as the late 1960s:

[Kolář] was often uncompromising in revealing the depreciation of ethical values, shallowness, and alcohol-induced merriment of the pub, and yet he was poetical in discovering extraordinary moments of everyday life.

They add that his ability to create works allowing for a variety of interpretations makes him "one of the first Czech photographers closer to Robert Frank than to the humanistic photojournalists of Magnum or Life magazine so generally admired and imitated". Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague , Ostrava

Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris. Photo Élysée, Lausanne.

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Six prints. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Three prints. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada. 15 prints. National Film Board of Canada. Yale University Art Gallery. Three prints.

Solo exhibitions

Fotografie Viktora Koláře, , Ostrava, 1964 Viktor Kolar's Czech Eye, Optica Gallery, Montreal, 1973 Člověk mezi lidmi, Fotochema, Ostrava, 1976 Ostrava, Fotochema, Ostrava, 1978 Viktor Kolář. Ostrava – fotografie z let 1968–1980, , Brno, 12 December 1980 – 11 January 1981 Novosvětská setkání, Galerie pod Podloubím, Olomouc, 1981 Ostrava, Malá výstavní síň, Liberec, 1981 Novosvětská setkání, Galéria F, Banská Bystrica, 1981 Ostrava, , Prague, 1981 Novosvětská setkání, Fotochema, Ostrava, 1981 Ostrava, Canon Gallery, Amsterdam, 1981 Viktor Kolář, Fotografijos Galeria, Kaunas, 1981 Viktor Kolář – fotografie, Muzeum Stillonu, Gorzów Wielkopolski, 1981 Viktor Kolář: Fotografie, (Galerie Makráč), Prague, 13–23 September 1982 Viktor Kolář – fotografie, Realistické divadlo, Prague, 1987 Viktor Kolář: 13 let, Galerie 4, Cheb, 29 March – 21 April 1988 Viktor Kolář – Schwarzes Ostrava, Palais Jalta, Frankfurt am Main, 1991 Baník Ostrava, , Dortmund, 12 May – 3 July 1992 Viktor Kolář: Nevinné oko, , Ostrava, 1993 (3 March – ) Viktor Kolář: Vročení let 1965–95, Silesian Museum, Opava, 21 March – 17 April 1996 Viktor Kolář – Ostrava, The Photographic Center, Athens, 1997 Viktor Kolář, Fotografie 1967–1997, Václav Špála Gallery, Prague, 6 November – 7 December 1997 Viktor Kolar: Figures de la solitude, Musée de l'Élysée, Lausanne, 12 November 1998 – 17 January 1999 Viktor Kolář, , (Czech Centres), 1999 Viktor Kolář, Fotografie / Photographs Ostrava 1963–1999, , Ostrava, 22 September – 24 October 1999 Na ostro (50 fotografií Viktora Koláře 1989–2003), Muzeum Boskovicka, Boskovice, 17–20 July 2003 Viktor Kolar Photographs, World of Glass, St Helens, 2007 Město budoucnosti = The town of future, Galerie u Rytíře, Liberec, 14 May – 12 July 2008 Retrospektywa/Retrospective of VK, Gallery A, Starmach, Kraków, 2009 Moravian Gallery, Brno, 11 March – 5 June, 2011 Viktor Kolář: Retrospektiva = Viktor Kolář: Retrospektiva, Stone Bell House, Prague, 7 June – 29 September 2013 Viktor Kolář. Fotografien = Viktor Kolář. Photographs, Sprengel Museum, Hannover. 25 February – 31 May 2015 Human, Only Photography, Berlin, 28 March – 31 May, 2015 Viktor Kolář: Canada 1968–73, Galerie Jiřího Jílka, Šumperk, 6–31 May 2015 Viktor Kolář: Ostrava, Nicolas Krupp Gallery, Basel, 5 September – 31 October 2015 Viktor Kolář: 2000 + 15 / Barevně, AP Ateliér (Josef Pleskot), Prague, 11 December 2015 – 20 May 2016 Viktor Kolář: Canada, 1968–1973, Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto, 21 January – 18 February 2017 Viktor Kolár: Photographs, Norma Mangione, Turin, 3 May – 28 July 2018 Viktor Kolar: Colors of Ostrava, Norma Mangione, Turin, 16 January – 11 April 2020 Viktor Kolář: Součastnost 1989–2022. 400 ASA Gallery, Smíchov, Prague, 22 April – 24 June 2022 Viktor Kolář, Fronta na kupónové knížky (Výstava jednoho díla ze sbírek GVUO) = Queuing for coupon booklets: Exhibition of a single work, , Ostrava, 7 March – 4 June 2023