When: November 16, 2022 at 6pm

Where: Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Chicago, 205 N Michigan avenue, suite 1680, Chicago 60601 IL

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As a collaborator of the EUNIC Freedoms project, The Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Chicago would like to invite everyone to the exhibit by Petr Sís.

The Exhibition features series of original illustrations for the book The Wall and the unique documentary itinerant exhibition project The Wall a bearing testimony to Peter Sís life experience in Prague, Czechoslovakia during communism. The installation consists of replications of red street noticeboards used for propaganda of the communist party before 1989. They contain original drawings, photographs, and objects made by the artist and director Peter Sís as well as authentic artifacts from the period 50s to 80s.

"The wall which for many years divided Berlin and the whole of Europe is now, fortunately, only a memory. But some memories need to be preserved. As a message about the past. As a warning to the future. Even though one wall has fallen, others remain and more are being built...

"Symbolic walls, ideological walls, and real walls. Walls of fear, confinement, and suspicion. Walls without which our lives could be freer and happier."​ -Peter Sís ​

The wonderful book “The Wall” (US edition by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 2007) manages to be both creative and insightful, documenting life behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War in words and graphic design. Peter Sis’s use of color in his intricate illustrations highlights and enhances the matter-of-fact language of his text. He has managed to create a journal, biography, and social/historical commentary that is fascinating reading for children and adults alike.

“Many of Peter Sís’s readers were not yet born when ‘the wall came down’. His brilliant autobiographical picture-book deserves to become a minor classic, keeping in the collective memory a shameful period of history which must never be forgotten.”— Sir Tom Stoppard, British playwright, and screenwriter

“Peter Sís’s book is most of all about the will to live one’s life in freedom and should be required reading for all those who take their freedom for granted.” —Václav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic

“Peter Sís, who has entranced children and adults with his magical stories and drawings, has taken his talent to a new level. Peter, born to dream and draw, is now also teaching the tragic history of his native Czechoslovakia under communism in this beautiful, poignant, and important work for those of all ages.”

— Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State

 

PETER SÍS is an internationally renowned writer of children’s books, illustrator, graphic artist and a creator of animated films. He was born in 1949 in Brno and grew up in Prague. He studied painting and filmmaking at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague and the Royal College of Art in London. He went to America in 1982, where he started illustrating for periodicals like The New York Times and soon began writing books.

He has received numerous awards for his work all over the world — from the Golden Bear at the Film Festival in Berlin to several medals from the American Library Association. ​He has got two Ragazzi Awards from the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Peter Sís is the first children’s book artist to be named a MacArthur Fellow and in 2012 he won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for his lifetime work. His animated work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. His artwork can also be found in public spaces; from a mosaic in the New York underground to giant tapestries at Prague, Dublin, and Cape Town airports. On Flying and Other Dreams, the largest exhibition of Peter Sís’s work so far organized by the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague in 2019, was seen by more than 100 000 visitors.

“ART IS COMFORT AND INSPIRATION… OUR ANCESTORS WOULD DRAW IN CAVES IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY… SO CAN WE…”