Butterfly Effect

In mathematics and physics, the butterfly effect is an expression that encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, a concept within chaos theory developed in the 1960s by the American meteorologist and mathematician Edward Lorenz. The idea is that small variations in initial conditions can produce vast differences in a system’s long‑term behavior. Lorenz famously framed this idea in a question, later used as the title of a lecture (1972): “Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” The two sculptures created by David Černý merge the fuselage of Spitfire aircraft with the wings of the monarch butterfly, paying tribute to the Czechoslovak RAF pilots who fought during the Second World War to defend Europe from Nazism and who were later persecuted by the communist regime. Černý developed this idea in 2024 for the Máj building, located on Národní třída, one of Prague’s central squares, a symbolic site where, on November 17, 1989, student protests ignited the Velvet Revolution, leading to the collapse of the communist regime. Černý himself took part in the student demonstrations, holding a banner bearing the word FREEDOM. David’s words: Since childhood I have loved planes and flying almost obsessively. I am an active pilot of almost everything that flies.. There are not many war machines that are such an iconic symbol of the fight for freedom and victory over evil. For me, it is definitely the Spitfire from my childhood. As a little boy, growing up in a family of artists, I was not very interested in art, I devoured Sky Riders, spent my days at the airport in airplanes, built models of Spitfires. The planes that made me want to become a fighter pilot, an era that belongs to the most elegant planes in aviation history, the machine that sent Hitler to the dustbin of history.