Vetruginova země - Obrazy spatřené – Linhart Patrik (2025)

This Czech-language novel about paintings draws readers into a world filled with stories. On a first reading, it is a declaration of love for painting; on a second, it calls for the reader’s participation, perhaps by actually creating a picture according to the instructions. Without the reader’s active involvement, the book remains incomplete. The author’s enthusiasm is complemented by numerous quotations from the work of Samuel Witowsky, creating a further level of joy in imagination: a game in which everything may be gained and nothing lost. As an author, researcher and “imaginary collector,” Patrik El lives with his artistic treasures and spins threads of stories and memories from them. Each selected work represents a fragment of a conversation that the painting had, and continues to have, with the author of these texts. He does not take a systematic approach, arranging the works neither by style, chronology nor historical importance. His collection is phenomenological, concerned with the way the works appear through his own experience. This is precisely what makes it unique: it is the collector’s personal map of the world. The book is in Czech.