Josef Váchal (1884-1969). “He was well versed in nine different trades. A painter and book-printer. He wrote a thing or two. He was an extreme mystic. A fool, a lecher, disturber of pure things, a scourge to his own soul.”. These words were written by Váchal himself to be inscribed onto his own tombstone. Váchal created a portrait of one of his friends Jindřich Imlauf, a writer and a photographer. The portrait shows Imlauf’s face in the background with some whirling circles in the foreground. There is certainly much more than meets the eye to the portrait of Imlauf, “ a poor soul that suffered greatly when he was alive.”
