Born Maria Sokolova in September 1919, Meda Mladkova was a patron of the arts who helped support Czech artists stuck behind the Iron Curtain. She trained to be a dancer but decided to leave Czechoslovakia after witnessing how terribly the Germans who remained in the country were treated at the end of the Second World War.

Mladkova first moved to Geneva where she studied economics, and later to Paris. There she met and married Jan Mladek, who was both a director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and temporarily in charge of Czechoslovakia’s main bank.

While living in Paris, Mladkova studied art history at two universities: Sorbonne and L’ecole du Louvre. She also met –and was heavily influenced by– the Czech painter Frantisek Kupka. Mladkova collected so many of his works that her collection eventually grew to be the largest in the world.

**Meda Mládková| Photo: Jindřich Nosek, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0**

In 1967, after nineteen years abroad, Mladkova returned to Czechoslovakia. While there, she became very immersed in the art world. She met with the Minister of Culture, the Education Minister, and the Director of the National Gallery and said to them:

“....Look I am Czech, I am against your regime and my husband is too. But we are not spies, we want to help you. If you let me visit anyone I want, I promise I will never ask who is in the Communist Party and who is not. It doesn’t matter to me. The only thing I am interested in is the artistic quality of the person.”

All three agreed to her terms, and Mladkova was able to connect with and help many artists at a time when art was heavily censored by the Soviets. Exhibitions could only be organized through the National Gallery or an organization called Artcentrum, neither of which would allow for artistic freedom. Mladkova supported and hosted artists and arranged exhibitions for their works in America where she and her husband had been living since the 60s. She also bought paintings and collections from artists and brought them to the United States. The art collection that she amassed was donated to the city of Prague after the 1989 Velvet Revolution.

Museum Kampa| Photo: Radio Prague International

In 1999, Meda Mladkova turned historic mills Sovovy Mlyny (Sova’s Mills) into a modern art gallery called Museum Kampa. That same year, she was bestowed a state decoration by then-President Vaclav Havel. In 2012 Mladkova became a Commander of the French National Order of Merit. She died at the age of 102 in Prague, Czech Republic on May 3, 2022.

Written by Anna Wallace

Sources

Frankova, Ruth. “Meda Mladkova and Her Priceless Art Collection.” Radio Prague International, 7 Apr. 2021, https://english.radio.cz/meda-mladkova-and-her-priceless-art-collection-8595995.

Frankova, Ruth. “Art Collector and Patron Meda Mladkova Dies Aged 102.” Radio Prague International, 5 Aug. 2022, https://english.radio.cz/art-collector-and-patron-meda-mladkova-dies-aged-102-8749413.

National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, “Meda Mladkova,” NCSML Digital Library, accessed April 1, 2023, https://ncsml.omeka.net/items/show/4144.