My Father in a Cemetery

At an early age Saudek and his twin brother, Karel, were separated from their family by the Nazis. Gustav, Jan’s father, and his six brothers were detained at Theresienstadt concentration camp. Tragically, only Jan, Karel, and Gustav survived. The Nazis’ occupation of Czechoslovakia shaped the tone of Saudek’s work. Here, Saudek alludes to the scar left on Czechoslovak society by the Holocaust, mourning not only the loss of his family, but also the loss of the 263,000 Czechoslovakian Jews during the Nazis’ occupation.

[Corey Gordon, wall text in "Suppression, Subversion, and the Surreal: The Art of Czechoslovakian Resistance," USC Fisher Museum of Art, March 9 - May 10, 2019.]