Every person’s life is influenced by many people and the facts and associated circumstances or influences that come from them throughout their duration. Sometimes joyful, sometimes painful, sometimes exciting or calming. It was no different in our lives, that is, in my and my family’s life. Among others, my grandparents, academic painter Jiří Mrázek (1920 – 2008) and Daisy Mrázková (1923 – 2016), painter, illustrator and writer, meant a lot to us. Of course, they meant a lot to us, in a way they were. However, due to the specific nature of their profession, their work could not be without significance for us: grandfather’s and grandmother’s paintings, drawings, and especially grandmother’s books, which, although primarily intended for children, have spoken to adults for decades, as can be persuaded. . My grandparents projected some of their precious qualities, something of their wisdom in life and of their human goodness into their work. We can feel all this in their work, as we have been experiencing it for many years, during their lifetime and after they left this world.
So who are we? We are a family, we are people who have been lucky enough to have met rare people, Daisy and Jiří Mrázkovi, for a long or short time in their lives, and who are grateful for that. And because their work, although widely represented in domestic and foreign collections, still forms a largely compact whole that we care for, we decided to make the beauty of this work accessible to other people in some way in the hope that it will bring them similar joy, pleasure and the encouragement we have found in it, and we find it again and again. That is why, with the support of our other relatives and friends, we have set up our gallery.
If we wanted to conclude this text with a word, we could, in the case of books, go for a quote from Aurelio Augustine and say: „Tolle – lege“. However, in the case of the work of Jiří and Daisy Mrázek, it is more complicated. It is not enough to take and read, but we need something else that we can express in a similar spirit: „Veni et vide“, ie „Come and see“.
So come on, you will be welcome!
Martin Pávek with his family