CZECH MODERNISM 1900 – 1945
Jaroslav Andel, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Alison De Lima Greene,
Ralph McKay, Willis Hartshorn ([Exhibition Curators]
Jaroslav Andel, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Alison De Lima Greene, Ralph McKay, Willis Hartshorn ([Exhibition Curators]: CZECH MODERNISM 1900 – 1945 . Boston: Bullfinch [in conjunction with the Houston Museum of Fine Arts], 1989. First edition. Quarto. Thick photo illustrated wrappers. 264 pp. 112 illustrations. 31 color plates. Wrappers lightly sunned. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. A nearly fine copy.
9 x 11.5 softcover book with 264 pages and 31 plates in color, 56 duotone and 56 halftones. Excellent reference work on Czech photography, films, painting and design. Texts include essays by Jaroslav Andel, Antonin Dufek, Alsion de Lima Greene, Jiri Kotalik and others. Book produced in conjunction with a travelling exhibit in 1990: the catalog of this historic exhibition is profusely illustrated ( often with rare images) and contains significant essays on Czech photography, film, cubism, and the relationship of the avant-garde & commercial art, etc.
- The Czechoslovak Film Archive
- In Searchof Redemption: Visions Of Beginnings And End
- Czech Modernism: 1900-1920
- Czech Cubism: Points Of Departure And Resolution
- From Lyrical Metaphors To Symbols Of Fate: Czech Surrealism Of The 1930s
- Modernism, The Avant-Garde And Photography
- Situation Of Czech Modern Photography
- Imaginative Photography
- Art/Commerce And The Avant-Garde
- Artists As Filmmakers
- The Theatreand Films Of Jiri Voskovec And Jan Werich
- On The Sunny Side Of Film
- Chronologies
Contains work by the following artists and photographers: Karel Anton, Ladislav Berka, Josef Capek, Frantisek Drtikol, Emil Filla, Karel Hajek, Miroslav Hak, Karel Hasler, Jan Kucera, Alfons Mucha, Ada Novak, Karel Plicka, Josef Sudek, Karel Teige, Max Urban, Josef Vachal, and others.
The first exhibition in America to document the evolution of Czech art during the first half of the 20th century originated at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 1989. Entitled Czech Modernism: 1900-1945, the exhibition includes over 100 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper on loan from international collections, with unprecedented loans from the National Gallery of Prague and other Czech museums.
Prague, the beautiful ancient capital of Bohemia, flourished as an important international crossroads of modern art and culture during the first half of the twentieth century. Its artists were an active part of the European Modernist movement, and as with other parallel movements in Europe like De Stijl in Holland and the German Bauhaus, the Czech avant-garde was interdisciplinary. Filmmakers and painters also worked in photography and sculpture.
Unlike artists of many other European cities, though, most Czech artists working between 1900 and 1945 chose not to become expatriates in the major art centers of Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and New York. Instead, they relied on brief trips abroad, publications, and visitors to Czechoslovakia to inform them of artistic innovations. The result was an art that grew out of the traditions of the Czech homeland, but that also addressed the topical problems of European artistic, social, and political developments.
Despite the brilliant body of work created during this time, Czech art remains relatively unknown to the Western world because of language barriers and political conditions after 1945 that prevented its assimilation into the general knowledge of art history. As other exhibitions have reintroduced the arts of Russia and more recently Scandinavia, so too this exhibition will pay tribute to and document, for the first time in America, this fruitful and complex era of Czech modernism.
The exhibition includes a total of 13 artists, among them Frantisek Kupka, whose radical, abstract paintings are widely recognized as some of the first works of non-objective art, and Zdenek Pesanek, who first introduced neon light into sculpture. Also included are Josef Capek, Emil Filla, Otto Gutfreund, and Bohumil Kubista, who created the uniquely Czech movement of Cubo-expressionism, which combined expressive content with the formal aspects of the Paris cubists.