Czechoslovakia
- Artist: Josef Koudelka
- Date: 1968
- Medium: Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
- Dimensions: image: 346 × 544 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
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About this artwork
This is the "Czechoslovakia" by Josef Koudelka. The black‑and‑white gelatin silver print captures a boy dressed as an angel riding a bicycle during a local carnival in Olomouc, Moravia. The composition is striking: horses in the foreground overlap the bicycle so the boy looks like he’s leading the herd. Koudelka was photographing life on the margins of Europe, having left Czechoslovakia for asylum in Britain in 1970. The image is part of his Exiles series, created while he followed folk festivals across the continent, printing each winter in London. In these images he mixes the theatrical with the everyday, turning carnival scenes into mirrors of displacement and longing. The boy’s angelic costume and the chaotic procession hint at a search for identity in a foreign land. This single frame invites viewers to imagine the tension between belonging and exile that defined Koudelka’s work.
See it in person
Czechoslovakia is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
