Watersprites, Desert, Mountains and Sea: To Have and Have Not or Four Times Home

Abstract

The four pictures by Josef Lada, which I just had framed, lay spread out on the living room floor-remnants of my parents' world, which had pervaded my young life. A world that, with the recent death of my mother, threatened to fall silent forever. Josef Lada is Czechoslovakia's most famous artist-illustrator. His pictures recall a lost innocence, which I suspect in the 30s and 40s and early 50s, Lada was defiantly asserting against history's cruel march across this tiny "Camelot," as my parents often called their native land.