Miroslava Hájek: The Curator Who Championed Bruno Munari

Miroslava Hájek, originally from Brno and born in 1947, moved to Italy in her twenties alongside her sister Ivana after receiving an in absentia sentence in Czechoslovakia for purportedly encouraging protest suicides in the wake of Jan Palach's self-immolation in 1969. Her partner, Vladimír Vladek, was one of seven fatalities. In Novara, she established the Centro Culturale UXA, where she organized events without work permits. Hájek curated exhibitions and safeguarded the works of artists such as Bruno Munari and Joseph Beuys, while also promoting female artists like Carol Rama. Her artistic focus included abstract color painting, new figuration, visual poetry, and sculpture. Recently, she co-curated a Munari exhibition in Naples and is involved in an ongoing exhibition on Pavel Korbička in Prague.