Exhibition Opening, 4 November – Viktor Kolář: Besieged City – Ostrava’s Outskirts in the Early 1960s

We cordially invite you to the opening of the exhibition Viktor Kolář: Besieged City – Ostrava’s Outskirts in the Early 1960s

Wednesday, 4 November 2026, at 5:00 p.m. in the lecture hall of the Institute of Geophysics.

Institute of Geophysics of the Czech Academy of Science
Boční II/1401
141 00 Prague 4 – Spořilov

At the artist’s request, the opening will include a concert by a jazz quartet performing several compositions by jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis.

This photographic series captures Ostrava at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, a city shaped by spoil heaps, heavy industry and the everyday lives of its inhabitants. Images of the industrial landscape and people whose lives were closely connected with coal mining and ironmaking offer a unique visual testimony to a world that has since disappeared. Presented in its entirety for the first time, the collection offers an authentic glimpse of the “besieged city” as it was shaped by industry and its rhythms.

Viktor Kolář (born 7 September 1941 in Ostrava) is a Czech documentary photographer. Since 1960, he has devoted himself primarily to his hometown of Ostrava. In addition to his photographic work, he has also taught at FAMU, the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where he was appointed professor in 2006. In 2010, the Association of Professional Photographers of the Czech Republic named him Czech Photography Personality of the Year.

The exhibition will be open to visitors on weekdays from 5 November 2026 to 15 January 2027.