The River of Life (a third part of original piece) 1969-70.
Stanislav Libensky & Jaroslava Brychtova
The River of Life was exhibited at the pavilion of Czechoslovakia (Former) in Expo1970, Osaka, Japan. The original sculpture was made of a double-layered colorless and relief glass, 4m high, 22m wide. It's theme was a world without violence so that it was created in a historical backdrop after "Prague Spring" democratic movement had been clamped down by Russian (Warsaw Treaty Organization) armed intervention. The theme caused an ire of the communist administration, the couple was banned having their exhibitions and leaving the country.
After closing the exposition, the sculpture dismounted into three which was respectively disposed by sale as if a punishment to the work itself for a crime. The theme of the work that depicted the flow of lifespan likened to a river current, had gone. The river of life probably disappeared from memory, actually it had gone to unknown whereabouts. Three decades or so passed from Osaka Expo, the lost one of three parts discovered by a director of TV station and a rep of the artist being disprayed at a salon of a beer company. The rest of whole is still missing.
A couple of years before his dead, I showed this photograph to the artist. He fixed his eyes on it in a while and spoke to himself persuading "this is not our work anymore."
When the Expo 2005 Aichi ended in last month, various things of all pavilions were auctioned off, I remembered a facial expression of Stanislav Libensky while I showed this photograph to him.
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