CRAACE research fellow Marta Filipová has been interviewed about the painter Milada Marešová (1901–1987) on the Czech national radio channel ČRo Dvojka. You can listen to the radio programme here.

The radio series Osudové ženy introduces remarkable women of Czech history to wider audiences, and has featured not only the life and work of female politicians, writers, sportswomen, and actresses, but also the artists Mary Duras (1884–1982) and Vlasta Vostřebalová-Fischerová (1898–1963). Each programme combines period recordings, dramatizations by actors, and studio discussions with specialists.

Marta was invited to contribute to the episode on Milada Marešová (1901–1987), a Czech female painter whose Bride with a Cigarette has recently featured as our Artwork of the Month. The episode explores Marešová’s life, both personal and professional. In the early 1920s she studied at the Art Academy and encountered New Objectivity in Germany, as well as Parisian modern art. Her political engagement and anti-fascist sentiments led to her imprisonment during the Second World War. After her lover emigrated to the States and eventually died in 1945, she had  never married and had no children. Following the war, Marešová joined the Communist party, which she left in 1968 after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw pact armies. The programme focuses on how these events impacted her work, including her political caricatures and psychological portraits of women. Her stimulating paintings and book illustrations were full of social criticism and depicted contemporary life across classes, but are still fairly unknown.

Milada Marešová: Charity Bazaar, 1927, Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg, on loan in the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin © Milada Marešová / heirs – photo: The Moravian Gallery in Brno