The imagination is multifaceted – it can create utopian dreams, change realities and be anti-authoritarian, subversive or poetic. That is something the French surrealists recognised even before the Second World War. Their last proponent, the Czech filmmaker, poet and artist Jan Švankmajer (b. 1934 in Prague) also understood that the imagination is what defines people. His motto, “All power to the imagination!”, captures the fantasy and lyricism found in the poetics of contemporary Czech artists, rooted in the avant-garde art tradition of the interwar period.

The imagination is multifaceted – it can create utopian dreams, change realities and be anti-authoritarian, subversive or poetic. That is something the French surrealists recognised even before the Second World War. Their last proponent, the Czech filmmaker, poet and artist Jan Švankmajer (b. 1934 in Prague) also understood that the imagination is what defines people. His motto, “All power to the imagination!”, captures the fantasy and lyricism found in the poetics of contemporary Czech artists, rooted in the avant-garde art tradition of the interwar period.