There is no such word as ‘Impossible’! (Tsjechisch Centrum)

What better occasion than the 145th anniversary since the Czech entrepreneur Thomas Bata was born to celebrate his legacy, while looking at historical photographs of his Zlín in colors for the first time?

Thomas Bata was an entrepreneur from Zlin, in Czech Republic, well known in Europe for his shoemaking company and for infrastructures that were quite unique for the early 20th century. In 1919 he was able to expand his business also to the Netherlands, where his shoes were greatly demanded especially by customers in the Amsterdam area. Afterwards, Bata opened his own shops here and established a sister company Bata, Maatschappij voor Schoenen en Lederindustrie, Amsterdam.

The functionalist architecture of the industrial Zlín is legendary. But what was life like in this architecture? To celebrate the anniversary of Thomas Bata’s birth in the April of 145 years ago, the Czech Centrum Rotterdam is delighted to invite you to an online exhibition of twenty colored photos from that time takes us decades back in time. The photos take us to ordinary life in the Zlín of Baťa at the time of its greatest bloom, namely the years 1920 – 1945. The original black and white photos were taken by corporate photographers Evjak, Vaňhara, Macháček, and others. This online exhibition realized by the Tomáš Baťa Foundation with the support of the Municipality of Zlín, gives us access to Baťa’s way of thinking and his view of the city of Zlín not only as an industrial metropolis but also as an ideal place to live.

You can now look at these historical pictures and at the city of Zlín as you have never had the chance to do before, visiting the website of the Tsjechisch Centrum and the website of The Thomas Bata Foundation, from April 7 until May 15.