Artist, curator, Charter 77 signatory and émigré Olaf Hanel (1943-2022) worked at the Czech Museum of Fine Arts in Prague (renamed GASK in 2009) between 1991 and 2009. In the 1970s, when he was engaged in an original form of performance art and Land Art, Olaf Hanel was a member of the Crusaders’ School of Pure Humour Without Jokes, an informal artistic group that defied the stifling climate of post-1968 Czechoslovak society with playful irony and a fundamental bond with the ‘absolute freedom’ of the pub. The small exhibition and accompanying symposium, which will take place at GASK on Saturday 11th March with the participation of the artist’s contemporary and close collaborator Eugen Brikcius, will present Olaf Hanel as an artist and curator in the context of both totalitarian oppression and renewed democracy after 1989. The project is taking place to mark what would have been Olaf Hanel’s 80th birthday.