Meda Mládková celebrates her 100th birthday. Her recipe for longevity? Chocolate and white wine!
Although she spent most of her life abroad, her homeland was very important to her. Meda Mládková has always supported primarily Czech art.
Since the late 1940s, she has lived in exile and devoted herself mainly to editorial work. Enormous inner strength and energy helped her win the dilapidated building of Sova's Mills at Kampa for a museum, which became a home to a large collection of luxury Czech and Central European modern art worth hundreds of millions of crowns.
If the culture survives, so will the nation!
Meda Mládková’s greatest ambition was to introduce the world to Czech modern art. All her life, she and her husband Jan were collecting luxury works, which she then exhibited not only in Vienna or Washington, but all over the world. Honoring her husband’s motto "If the culture survives, so will the nation," which she had immortalized on the Sova's Mill building, she founded the Kampa Museum. It was opened in 2001 and it’s also the home of Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation.
In addition to collecting art, she was also a great patron and provided help to Czechoslovak artists who weren’t allowed to exhibit.
With František Kupka, it was enough to ring the door bell
Besides meeting her future husband Jan Viktor Mládek in 1955, Meda also experienced another fated meeting: with František Kupka in 1956 near Paris. As an art student, she rang at his door, asking to see his work. She was so impressed by his luxurious paintings that they became the foundation of a large art collection she began to build with her husband. Today she owns the largest collection of Kupka’s works in the world.
Celebrating a three-digit anniversary
In September, the art collector and patron Meda Mládková will celebrate an incredible 100. Would you like to know her recipe for longevity? She will gladly tell you: "A bar of chocolate and white wine."
The highlight of the birthday celebration will be the theater performance Meda in the courtyard of the Kampa Museum with Tatiana Vilhelmová in the lead role. The premiere will take place on June 24 and the derniére on September 8, on the day of Mládek’s 100th birthday.
