Prague - Her name is a concept. She radiates incredible strength, inner energy, and vitality. At first glance, the slender lady Meda Mládková has dedicated her entire life to culture and supporting artists from former Czechoslovakia, whom the totalitarian regime did not favor. Throughout her life, she and her husband amassed an extensive collection of modern art, fought for a building in Prague for it, and established a museum. Also a great animal lover, she continues to work hard even at the impressive age of 95, which she will celebrate on Monday.
    "I am not a gallery owner. I am just a private person who loves art and collects the paintings of those I like, whom I believe in, and whom I wanted to help," she says about herself.
    In the Czech Republic, Madam Meda is known as a tenacious fighter for the modern reconstruction of the Sovovy mlýny on Kampa Island in Prague and a patron of Czech artists. She is strict with herself, sometimes harsh, and allows herself no excuses. And she places the same demands on those around her.
    Her relationship with František Kupka, perhaps the most famous Czech painter in the world, began personally in 1956 in Paris, where she studied art history and came across one of his paintings. She went to visit Kupka, who was living in Paris, and in his studio, she experienced true excitement about art for the first time in her life. And she never distanced herself from his works.
    Meda reportedly took her life into her own hands at a young age when she defied her father's will and insisted on studying in Paris. She was born on September 8, 1919, in Zákupy in northern Bohemia, and her father was the director of the local brewery.
    When schools closed during the war, Meda took a job as a typist for her father's friend, who was the director of Škoda in Hradec Králové. After the war, she went to study economics in Switzerland.
    In 1948, she decided she would not return home and founded the publishing house Editions Sokolova in Paris. Among other things, she published essays by Ferdinand Peroutka and a book about Toyen with texts by poets André Breton, Jindřich Heisler, and Benjamin Péret.
    This work led her to meet her future husband, Jan Mládek, who, as a young economist in Paris, contributed to the activities of the publishing house, albeit minimally, so Miss Meda personally visited him and asked for larger contributions. He did not resist. "It took me three years to convince him that I was the best woman for him," she revealed on the talk show of Jan Kraus.
    She married him, and with Mládek, who spent most of his life working at the International Monetary Fund, where he managed the department for the transformation of economies in Africa, she traveled the whole world: "When we were together, I loved talking and discussing with him the most."
    In the 1960s, she went to visit her homeland. She discovered modern art behind the Iron Curtain and decided to help these artists - she convinced the Ford Foundation to establish a six-month fellowship for them. She also purchased a number of paintings by these artists herself.
    After her husband's death in 1989, Mládková donated the entire collection to Prague at his wish. After the revolution, she selected a dilapidated building of Sovovy mlýny on Prague's Kampa Island and established the Meda and Jan Mládek Foundation. However, the significance of the gift was gradually overshadowed by a prolonged dispute with the authorities over the final appearance of the building.
    The core of the dispute became the glass cube that Madam Meda wished to place on the staircase tower. The artifact exceeded the roof of the building and, according to conservationists, changed the appearance of the Lesser Town skyline. The former director of the National Gallery, Milan Knížák, allegedly wrote to Mládková that she could "load her paintings into American vinegar."
    Ultimately, Mládková was helped by the then Minister of Culture Pavel Dostál. The museum was opened in the fall of 2003.
    The foundation has also been striving for many years to rent the Werich villa on Prague's Kampa, where the famous actor lived from 1945 until his death in 1980. "If the politicians wanted, the house could have lived for several years now," states Mládková, tired of the bureaucracy of the local authorities.
    "I believe that art is important because it elevates people and makes them better," claims Madam Meda, who, besides art, also has a great love for animals. In her house in Washington, she has several cats and occasionally says that she is much more interested in animals than in art.