Provenance: The Collection of Printmaker Mogens Sandberg, Denmark.

The collection of Jirí Kolár works up for auction originates from printer Mogens Sandberg's collection. In 1965, Sandberg printed the book “Poem R” for the artist. The book is an example of Jirí Kolár's concrete poetry or shape poetry - the poem consists entirely of Rs and has geometrically cut-out pages. By way of thanks for his part in the publication, Mogens Sandberg received the collection up for auction. With the intervention of Fluxus artist Eric Andersen, the works were brought out of Czechoslovakia, where they had been banned from the time of the Communist takeover in 1948–49. For the same reason, labels bearing the artist's original signature were later stuck on, to ensure that the connection to the artist was not discovered.

As an artist, Jirí Kolár is internationally recognised for his originality, especially when it comes to his graphics and collages, and he invented various techniques (rollage, chiasmage, prollage, etc.). His works express the split spirit of the culture at that time in surprising compositions of cut-out images, which are not without their irony and humour. Kolár exhibited in a great many countries and institutions, including retrospectively at Guggenheim in New York in 1975, and his works are represented at several museums. Having been stripped of his Czechoslovak citizenship in 1980, he settled in Paris, where he published the journal “Revue K”. In his later life, he spent more time in the country of his birth.