Why do we celebrate World Braille Day on January 4? That day was the birthday of a Frenchman named Louis Braille (1809–1852), whose name is associated with the world's blind writing system. His birthday is commemorated today as World Braille Day. It was proclaimed by the United Nations in November 2018 at its General Assembly and was first celebrated on January 4, 2019. It celebrates the importance of this writing system as a means of communication for the full enjoyment of human rights by blind and partially sighted people around the world.

Louis Braille lost his sight at the age of three due to an injury and infection. He was only 15 when he came up with a design for a system that would allow the blind not only to read but also to write. He later perfected the system, which led to its use in mathematics and even musical notation.

So what is Braille? It is a writing system based on the principle of plastic dots embossed into the base material. Each individual character, assigned to individual letters of the alphabet, is written in a 2×3 rectangular grid. In each of the six imaginary squares, a raised dot is either present or absent, and the reader perceives the dots by touch. The first publication in Braille was published in 1829 and the font is still used today, although it is gradually being transferred from paper to modern technologies, for example in the form of tactile displays on computers. However, we can encounter it almost at every step, for example in the navigation signs of buildings on staircases and in elevators. Since the mid-19th century, Braille has been one of the most important global aids for people with visual impairments.

On the occasion of this important day we have selected a painting by the painter Juliana Stritzková Jirousová (September 17, 1943, Stará Říše – August 25, 2023, Stará Říše) from the gallery collections called Landscape of Blind Children. This oil on cardboard, dated 1963, is an early work by the artist and was probably created during her time in psychiatric hospitals in Havlíčkův Brod and subsequently in Prague, where she worked as a teacher and art therapist. And it was the work of psychiatric patients that influenced her work at the time, close to the poetics of art brut. Here, she depicted a fantastic, dreamy hilly landscape with a pond and plants in the foreground and four ethereal children's figures. The composition is colored in dark shades of black, brown, gray and blue, illuminated only by the light figures of children, plants and the pond.

Jana Bojanovská, January 4, 2025