Česká unie karikaturistů | svet-kresli-havla

The Czech Union of Cartoonists invites all authors, home and abroad, to make a caricature of Václav Havel, the first Czechoslovak president in the postcommunist era. We wish to pay honour in this way to the man who played so great a role in the transition of our country from totality to democracy. The works submitted will be published on the Union’s webpage and the selected caricatures will be exhibited or, as the case may be, included in a catalogue. Please, send your works in A4 size, in colour, greyscale or black and white, in resolution of 300 dpi (JPG) to the following address: vaclav.havel@ceska-karikatura.cz

Václav Havel (5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech playwright, essayist, critic and, later on, a politician. He became the ninth and last president of Czechoslovakia (1989–1992) and the first president of the Czech Republic (1993–2003). In the 1960s he was engaged in a Prague theatre „Divadlo Na zábradlí“ where he acquired a reputation with his plays The Garden Party („Zahradní slavnost“) and The Memorandum („Vyrozumění“). During the Prague Spring he took part in the political discussions on the side of those who argued for democratisation. After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 that was led by the Soviet Union to crack down the reforms, Václav Havel was banned to publish and became one of the prominent dissidents and opponents of the communist normalisation regime that was installed thereafter. He spoke and acted in defence of political prisoners and stood at the foundation of Charta 77, an informal civic initiative set up to strive for respect for human and civil rights. Havel became one of its first spokesmen, which yielded him international prestige but also nearly five years of imprisonment. At that time he wrote important essays that were circulated in samizdat, while not ceasing to work on his play scripts. After the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, Václav Havel was involved in founding Citizen’s Forum („Občanské fórum“) to create a broad political platform against the Communist Party. The events took a rather swift course. The Forum chose him for their presidential candidate and Václav Havel was then elected President of the Czechoslovak Republic on 29 December 1989. In his position he played a key role in transition of the Czechoslovakia and, later on, the Czech Republic to parliamentary democracy and its integration into the political structures of the Western civilisation.

As a playwright, Václav Havel was able to found his audience in many countries of the world with his absurd dramas, raising questions concerning political power, bureaucracy, language, the role of the individual in modern society, etc. His essays and letters from the prison contain political analyses and meditations on the ideas of political power, human freedom, ethics or transcendence. But it was especially his moral qualities that made him one of the most respected personalities in the Czech Republic and brought him recognition worldwide.