From Arcimboldo to Mikoláš Aleš
Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) was an Italian painter called to Prague in 1562 to work for Ferdinand I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, as portraitist to the imperial family. He mainly enriched the famous art and curiosity cabinets of Emperors Maximilian II and Rudolf II, but returned to Milan in 1587, where he died in 1593. The fantastic paintings he created for Rudolf II's cabinet of curiosities found admirers among the Surrealists. At the Louvre, enthusiasts can contemplate his Seasons, a series of portraits based on assemblages of plants.
Petr Johannes Brandl or Jan Petr Brandl (1668-1735 ) was a late Baroque or Rococo artist who was famous during his lifetime, although he never left the country. A Bust of an Apostle created shortly before 1725 hangs in the National Gallery in Prague, which devoted an entire room to the artist after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Nicknamed the "Czech Rubens" or "Bohemia's first Bohemian", in Mala Strana he painted St. Joseph with the Child Jesus and the Blessed Virgin (1702) in the Church of St. Joseph. He also created the Vision of Saint Luitgarde, a painting that is said to have inspired Matyáš Braun, another important Czech Baroque artist, to sculpt a work - strongly inspired by the painting - for the Charles Bridge. Rebellion, indecency, the struggle against convention, perpetual conflict with the law, debts and vagrancy were an inseparable part of his life, and he died abandoned in an inn in Kutná Hora.
After painting romantic outdoor landscapes, Joseph Mánes (1820-1871) soon became involved in the "national revival" movement. This nationalist-inspired cultural movement aimed to repel German pressure from the Habsburgs and assert Czech identity. Joseph Mánes is the author of the first calendar painted on the town hall clock (a cycle of twelve idylls on the life of the Czech peasant), rehabilitated in the 19th century. Most of his paintings have a patriotic color, as evidenced by scenes of Bohemian villages and peasants, both historical and mythological.
Mikoláš Aleš (1852-1913) is one of the leading exponents of Czech nationalist painting. In 1878, he decorated Prague's National Theater with paintings on the theme of the fatherland. He also painted frescoes for the Vodňany Church, the Hotel Rott and the present-day Prague Town Hall. Together with artist friends, he founded the Mánes art circle in 1887. After going bankrupt and living in extreme poverty, the artist regained a certain popularity around 1900. Illustrations for magazines, books and poems, diplomas, invitations, card games, announcements, wall calendars and postcards make up his body of work, comprising over three thousand drawings and paintings.
From Art Nouveau to Surrealism
Art Nouveau emerged throughout Europe at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In Central Europe, it's known as the Secession, and it was all the rage in Prague between 1890 and 1910. Over the next twenty years, this artistic vogue spread to all parts of the city.
Painter, designer, lithographer and poster artist Alfons Mucha (1860-1939) is one of the most famous representatives of Art Nouveau. His meeting with Sarah Bernhardt in fin-de-siècle Paris would be decisive for his fame. Indeed, thanks to the jewelry and dresses he designed at the request of the famous French actress, his work was exhibited in Paris, Munich, Brussels, London, Vienna and Prague from 1897 onwards. This benchmark enabled him to occupy an important place at the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition. Paradoxically, his triumph in Prague was far from assured. The artist, who lived in France and then the United States, did not return to his homeland until 1910. He was nevertheless called upon to build the Municipal House (Obecní dům), which monopolized the greatest artists. He painted the frescoes in the Mayor's Hall and a few medallions, before embarking on the enormous Slavonic Epic cycle, which took him over eighteen years to complete and is now on display at Moravský Krumlov Castle.
Inspired by the chromatic research of Edvard Munch, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, the Czech Expressionist movement is most closely linked to the Group of Eight, which first exhibited in Prague in 1907. Emil Filla, Antonín Procházka, Max Horb, Bohumil Kubišta, who became a member in 1911, and Otakar Kubín established artistic exchanges with the German group Die Brücke.
Creating a specifically Prague style, "cubo-expressionism", based on biblical and mythological themes, Procházka and Kubišta's group of visual artists exhibited for the first time in 1912 at the newly completed Municipal House. Architect Pavel Janák designed the rooms, showcases and pedestals. A large sculpture by Otto Gutfreund, Anguish, dominates the exhibition. This is a utopian "total art", encompassing painting, sculpture and architecture, as well as interior design, furniture, objects and graphics.
František Drtikol (1883-1961) was a Czech photographer, best known for his nude photographs and portraits influenced by Futurism and Cubo-Expressionism in the 1920s. In 1910, Drtikol moved to Prague, where he opened a studio with a partner, Augustin Skarda, who let him take the photographs and was mainly responsible for running the studio. He enjoyed great success, taking portraits of the entire Czech, European and even international intelligentsia. He met and photographed the French writer Paul Valéry and the Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. In 1935, he withdrew from the photographic career that had made him famous. He closed his studio and anonymously continued his work as an artist in other media, such as painting. He learned meditation techniques, devoted himself to teaching Buddhism and translated Indian and Tibetan religious texts.
Close to Bauhaus, Vhutemas and the De Stijl movement, the Czech Devětsil movement reconciles poeticism - a subjective, irrational conception of art - and constructivism - a rational, functional vision that tends, on the contrary, towards maximum objectivity. In 1923, Devětsil organizes an exhibition entitled "Bazaar of Modern Art" with Jindřich Štyrský (1899-1942) and Marie Čermínová alias Toyen (1902-1980), as well as Josef Šíma (1891-1971). The techniques of photomontage, collage and typographic montage are used to create Dadaist-inspired poem-paintings. A member of this movement, sculptor Zdeněk Pešánek (1896-1965) was perhaps the first in Europe to inaugurate kinetic sculpture produced with electricity, neon lights, Bakelite, resins and Plexiglas. In 1932, Devětsil put an end to his activity.
Poet Vitěslav Nezval is behind the founding of the Prague Surrealist group. As early as 1930, he published the magazine Zodiaque, which publicized the activities of French surrealist André Breton and other Parisian surrealists, with whom he forged personal relationships. In 1934, he founded the Prague Group with Konstantin Biebl (poet), Vincenc Makovský (sculptor), Jindřich Honzl (director) and Bohuslav Brouk (psychoanalyst). Štyrský and Toyen also joined this group. Between 1935 and 1938 - the date of the Prague group's second exhibition - Prague played a leading role in the development of international Surrealism.
From Josef Sudek to New Realism
Not affiliated with any movement, Josef Sudek (1896-1976) did his military service in Kadaň. In 1915, he was drafted into the army and sent to the trenches of the First World War in Italy. A war he photographs. He returned from the Italian front alive, but with his right arm amputated, he received a war invalid's pension. He decided to devote himself to photography, and his pictorialist style was reminiscent of painting. In 1924, he founded the Prague Photographic Society (Pražskou fotografickou společnost) with the support of an association of local photographers. In 1927, he founded his own photography studio. Today, his work from these years is one of the best Czech testimonies of the interwar period, as he photographed the war-wounded. He then signed up for the restoration of Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral, which he assiduously documented. From 1927 to 1936, he worked as a photographer for the Dp (Družstevní práce) publishing house, for which he produced portraits. His first solo exhibition was held at the same publishing house in 1932. Subsequently, he held a series of solo exhibitions, but only in Prague. His work never crossed the Czechoslovak border. During the Second World War, Sudek shut himself away in his home and produced the famous series "La fenêtre de mon atelier", through which he can see his garden, as well as the "Labyrinthes" series, the cluttered interior of his studio. He goes out at night, secretly photographing the streets of Prague. In 1975, his work was exhibited abroad, and he died shortly afterwards.
Under the German occupation, artists and writers like Josef Čapek, Filla and Preissig are arrested and sent to concentration camps. Others were executed, like novelist Vladimir Vančura, a former member of Devětsil. However, the Group 42 founded underground during the Second World War included painters František Gross, Antonin Hudeček, Kamil Lhoták, Ladislav Zívr, photographer Miroslav Hák, poet Jiří Kolář, and art critic Jindřich Chalupecký. The group remained active until the end of the war, producing a series of underground works.
After the February 1948 putsch, independent artists' associations were dissolved and their magazines ceased publication. The Groupe 42 ceased its activities. 1949 saw the founding of the Union of Czechoslovak Artists, a centralized body whose role was to supervise artists, ensure compliance with the ideological guidelines of socialist realism, plan and control exhibitions, and allocate studios and public commissions.
Since 1989, a renaissance
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet empire disintegrated throughout Eastern Europe. Shortly after the Velvet Revolution, David Černý (1967), a Prague sculptor and conceptual artist, repainted the pedestal Josef Stalin tank in pink in 1991, symbolizing the liberation of the city of Prague by the Red Army. This gesture made him famous and he became a well-known sculptor, working particularly in public spaces. Some of his monumental works, somewhere between pop and surrealism, are permanently installed in the streets of Prague. Open your eyes wide!
Today, tireless graffiti artists Pasta Oner and Jan Kaláb(aka Point, aka Cakes) liven up the streets of Prague. "God Saves, We Spend" says the former about consumer society, while the latter, a pioneer of street art in the Czech Republic, invents 3D frescoes on the capital's walls. There is no specific Prague street art association, and the street artists pursue their careers internationally, as befits this borderless art form.
Finally, in the field of photography, we must mention Libuše Jarcovjáková (born 1952 in Prague), a Czech photographer whose work was recently the subject of a retrospective at the Rencontres photographiques d'Arles (2019). Her raw, poetic style tells the story of Prague's underground nightlife, minorities and the homosexual community. Above all, his black-and-white photographs capture moments of freedom in the midst of the Communist era. Long in the shadows, Libuše Jarcovjáková's work is now internationally recognized. She now lives in Prague.
