   Top to bottom: Bohumil Kubišta, 1908, Self portrait; House of the Black Madonna by Josef Gočár; porcelain by Pavel Janák | |
| Years active | c. 1912–1914 |
|---|---|
| Country | Czechoslovakia |
| Influences | Cubism |
| Influenced | Rondocubism |
Czech Cubism (referred to more generally as Cubo-Expressionism) [1] was an avant-garde art movement of Czech proponents of Cubism, active mostly in Prague from 1912 to 1914. Prague was perhaps the most important center for Cubism outside Paris before the start of World War I. [2] [3]
Members of this movement realized the epochal significance of the cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and attempted to extract its components for their own work in all branches of artistic creativity: sculpture, painting, applied arts and architecture.[ citation needed ]
The most notable participants in this movement were the painters František Kupka (whose interests were rooted more in abstraction), Emil Filla, Bohumil Kubišta, Antonín Procházka, Vincenc Beneš, and Josef Čapek, the sculptor Otto Gutfreund, the writer Karel Čapek, and the architects Pavel Janák, Josef Gočár, Vlastislav Hofman and Josef Chochol. Many of these artists were members of the Mánes Union of Fine Arts. A major division in Czech architecture occurred after 1912 when many young avant-garde artists from Jan Kotĕra and his circle divorced themselves from the Mánes Association. These younger architects were more idealistic in their outlook and criticized the strict rationalism of their forebears, Otto Wagner and Kotĕra. Janák, Gočár, and Hofman founded the group Skupina výtvarných umĕlců (Group of Plastic Artists) and established a journal for the group, Umĕlecký mĕsíčník (Artistic Monthly).
After Czechoslovakia's founding in 1918, architectural Czech Cubism gradually developed into Czech Rondocubism, which was more decorative, as it was influenced by traditional folk ornaments to celebrate the revival of Czech national independence.
Czech Cubists distinguish their work through the construction of sharp points, slicing planes, and crystalline shapes in their art works. These angles allowed the Czech Cubists to incorporate their own trademark in the avant-garde art group of Modernism. They believed that objects carried their own inner energy which could only be released by splitting the horizontal and vertical surfaces that restrain the conservative design and “ignore the needs of the human soul.” It was a way to revolt from the typical art scene in the early 1900s in Europe. This evolved into a new art movement, referred to generally as Cubo-Expressionism; combining the fragmentation of form seen in Cubism with the emotionalism of Expressionism. [4]
Czech Cubism developed between 1911 and 1914. [5] It was a contemporary development of functionalism generated by architects and designers in Prague. Fifteen years later, the first concept of cubism itself was written off as a decorative purpose, a replacement of secessionism and mistaken departure into ‘aestheticism’ and ‘individualism’. On the contrary, it was a revolt against traditional values of realism.
Czech Cubism was first conceal by the Modern Movement and masked by the aesthetic dictates of Stalinist and post-Stalinist culture in Czechoslovakia. After the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and the post modern attraction of ornamentation and decoration, there came to be a rise of fascination in Czech culture and its own unique forms of cubism. Czech Cubism developed paradoxically as both a product of Czech bourgeois affluence and as an avant-garde rejection of secessionist designers such as Otto Wagner and Jan Kotěra. Architects such as Josef Chochol and Pavel Janák devised spiritualist philosophies of design and a dynamic ideal of planar form derived from cubist art. As Cubism spread across the European continent in the early 20th century, its greatest impact can be seen today in the Czech Republic. Pyramid and crystal forms were one of the signature principles seen in Czech Cubism which was incorporated in architecture, furniture, and applied arts.
The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague (UPM) uses the House of the Black Madonna as a permanent exhibition space for Czech Cubist art. [6]
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related artistic movements in music, literature, and architecture. In Cubist works of art, the subjects are analysed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form—instead of depicting objects from a single perspective, the artist depicts the subject from multiple perspectives to represent the subject in a greater context. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century. The term cubism is broadly associated with a variety of artworks produced in Paris or near Paris (Puteaux) during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s.
Josef Gočár was a Czech architect. He was one of the founders of modern architecture in Czech Republic.
Josef Chochol was a Czech architect.
Jan Kotěra was a Czech architect, artist and interior designer, and one of the key figures of modern architecture in Bohemia.
The House of the Black Madonna is a cubist building in the Old Town of Prague, Czech Republic. It was designed by Josef Gočár. The first floor houses a café, while the four upper floors are used by the Museum of Czech Cubism.
The National Gallery Prague, formerly the National Gallery in Prague, is a state-owned art gallery in Prague, which manages the largest collection of art in the Czech Republic and presents masterpieces of Czech and international fine art in permanent and temporary exhibitions. The collections of the gallery are not housed in a single building, but are presented in a number of historic structures within the city of Prague, as well as other places. The largest of the gallery sites is the Trade Fair Palace, which houses the National Gallery's collection of modern art. Other important exhibition spaces are located in the Convent of St Agnes of Bohemia, the Kinský Palace, the Salm Palace, the Schwarzenberg Palace, the Sternberg Palace, and the Wallenstein Riding School. Founded in 1796, it is one of the world's oldest public art galleries and one of the largest museums in Central Europe.
Emil Filla was a Czech painter. He was a leader of the avant-garde in Prague between World War I and World War II and was an early Cubist painter.
Bohumil Kubišta was a Czech painter and art critic, one of the founders of Czech modern painting. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, but left in 1906 to study at the Reale Istituto di Belle Arti in Florence. He, Emil Filla, Antonín Procházka, and five others founded Osma, an Expressionist-oriented group of artists.
Czech culture has been shaped by the nation's geographical position in the middle of Europe, the Slavic ethnicity of Czechs, influences from its neighbors, political and social changes, wars and times of peace.
Otto Gutfreund also written Oto Gutfreund, was a Czechoslovak sculptor. After studying art in Prague and Paris, he became known in the 1910s for his sculptures in a cubist style. After his service in the First World War he worked in a more realistic style. His later work includes many small polychrome ceramic figures as well as architectural decorations.
The Mánes Association of Fine Artists was an artists' association and exhibition society founded in 1887 in Prague and named after painter Josef Mánes.
Pavel Janák was a Czech modernist architect, furniture designer, town planner, professor and theoretician.
Cubist sculpture developed in parallel with Cubist painting, beginning in Paris around 1909 with its proto-Cubist phase, and evolving through the early 1920s. Just as Cubist painting, Cubist sculpture is rooted in Paul Cézanne's reduction of painted objects into component planes and geometric solids; cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones. Presenting fragments and facets of objects that could be visually interpreted in different ways had the effect of 'revealing the structure' of the object. Cubist sculpture essentially is the dynamic rendering of three-dimensional objects in the language of non-Euclidean geometry by shifting viewpoints of volume or mass in terms of spherical, flat and hyperbolic surfaces.
Janáček Theatre is an opera house in the city of Brno, Czech Republic. It is the largest of the three theatres serving the National Theatre Brno ("NdB") opera and ballet company, the others being the Mahen and the Reduta. It was built starting in 1960 after decades of delay and finally opened in October 1965, since when it has premiered some twenty operas and ballets. A major renovation was completed in 2018. The building's façade is north-facing, away from the city center and towards the nearby house of its namesake composer, who is grandly memorialized on the adjacent landscaped green.
The Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague is a public university located in Prague, Czech Republic. The university offers the study disciplines of painting, illustration and graphics, fashion design, product design, graphic design, ceramics and porcelain, photography and architecture.
Man on a Balcony, is a large oil painting created in 1912 by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes (1881–1953). The painting was exhibited in Paris at the Salon d'Automne of 1912. The Cubist contribution to the salon created a controversy in the French Parliament about the use of public funds to provide the venue for such 'barbaric art'. Gleizes was a founder of Cubism, and demonstrates the principles of the movement in this monumental painting with its projecting planes and fragmented lines. The large size of the painting reflects Gleizes's ambition to show it in the large annual salon exhibitions in Paris, where he was able with others of his entourage to bring Cubism to wider audiences.
St Sebastian is a 20th-century painting by the Bohemian artist Bohumil Kubišta. Saint Sebastian was a Christian martyr. It is held in the National Gallery in Prague.
La Maison Cubiste, also called Projet d'hôtel, was an architectural installation in the Art Décoratif section of the 1912 Paris Salon d'Automne which presented a Cubist vision of architecture and design. Critics and collectors present at the exhibition were confronted for the first time with the prospect of a Cubist architecture.
Czech architecture, or more precisely architecture of the Czech Republic or architecture of Czechia, is a term covering many important historical and contemporary architectural movements in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. From its early beginnings to the present day, almost all historical styles are represented, including many monuments from various historical periods. Some of them are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Czech Art Deco, Legiobank style, National style, National decorativeness, Curved Cubism, Rondocubism or Third Cubist style is a series of terms used to describe the characteristic style of architecture and applied arts, which existed mainly during the First Czechoslovak Republic. In the beginning, this particular style was completely neglected. Some rehabilitation has taken place since the 1950s. In the 1990s, attempts were made to place this specifically Czech style in the context of European Art Deco.
