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Ester Krumbachová Archive

14 OCTOBER 2025

We are delighted to announce a new research partnership with the Ester Krumbachová Archive, a project dedicated to one of the most influential figures in Czechoslovak New Wave cinema of the 1960s.

Ester Krumbachová (1923–1996) is best known for her exceptional and prolific work as a costume designer in film and theatre, but her artistic legacy encompasses an astonishing range of disciplines – including art direction, scriptwriting, directing, fiction and theoretical essays, drawing, jewellery and other crafts. She was deeply respected within the Czech film circles as a powerful creative force and a mentor, affectionately described as the movement’s “spiritual guru” or eminence gris – yet her work remained largely overlooked both at home and abroad until recently.

The last few years have seen a wide-ranging critical reappraisal of Krumbachová’s work, with her contribution recognised through exhibitions in Prague, Brno and Glasgow, film seasons in London and New York, and publications that foreground the artist’s distinctive vision. This renewed attention owes much to the achievements of the Ester Krumbachová Archive, initiated in 2016 and run by the Prague-based curatorial organisation Are. Its mission has been to digitise thousands of surviving objects, writings, scripts, and designs, and to champion new artistic and scholarly engagement with Krumbachová’s legacy.

With a focus on costume design and selected writings on costume and dress, this partnership aims to bring new insights into this aspect of Krumbachová’s work, critically reassessing it and making it more accessible for the wider community.

In 2016 – twenty years after Ester Krumbachová’s death in 1996 – her last partner Ivan Paik granted the Are organisation and a student research group from Prague’s AAAD access to her estate. Until then, the estate had remained inaccessible, despite repeated efforts by her colleagues, friends and film historians. This breakthrough was made possible largely thanks to the artist and filmmaker Blaise Kirschner, whose initiative and persistence were pivotal in opening the estate to researchers.

The Archive’s Editors are Zuzana Blochová and Habima Fuchs. Its long-term Curators and Research Fellows include Edith Jeřábková, Francis McKee, Kateřina Svatoňová and Marketa Uhlirova.

The Archive is supported by the European Union – Next Generation EU, the Czech Recovery Plan and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.