History of Czech fine art
photo: (sxc.hu)
What happened in the realm of fine art at the very beginning of the
Czech history? Many magnificent paintings and other fine art pieces can
be seen in Czech galleries or in places for which they were specifically
created.
The prehistoric world in pictures
In
the beginning there was woman, or actually the statue of a woman: a
17-centimeter-tall, oval-shaped statue made from a mixture of ash, clay
loam and bone dust. Archeologists estimate that she is as much as 30,000
years old. They call her the
Vestonice Venus after the place where she was found, at a mammoth hunters’ encampment in Dolní Vestonice in Moravia.
Embossed works, frescos and illuminations of Romanesque art
Romanesque
art played an important role in the culture of the Czech lands from the
year 1100 up to the start of the 13th century.
A well-preserved example of embossed Romanesque sculpture is the appearance of
the windows of the palace in Olomouc, which is probably the work of Italian stonemasons.
The triptych of St. George’s cloister on the grounds of Prague Castle with the figures of Přemysl I and the abbess Agnes (Anežka) is also very attractive.
All Romanesque churches were adorned with frescoes. The oldest and most artistically important monument comprises the
murals in St. Catherine’s rotunda in Znojmo, standing on a high buttress above the Dyje River.
Book painting enjoyed
great popularity. The most exquisite work, which cannot be compared
with anything else from this period in Central Europe, is the
Vyšehrad Codex. Besides numerous initials and scenes from the Old Testament, it also contains up to 30 pictures from the New Testament.
Gothic art
Emperor
and the Bohemian king Charles IV stood at the head of an extensive
super-state encompassing what is today Germany, Austria, Switzerland and
the Benelux countries. Charles IV’s court painter was
Master Theodoricus, who was given the task of decorating the
Chapel of the Holy Cross (kaple sv. Kříže), the most important space of
Karlštejn Castle,
where the imperial crown jewels, valuable state documents and precious
relics of saints were originally meant to be stored. He filled this
ceremonial room with 129 panel paintings containing the venerable
figures of martyrs, holy widows and virgins, popes, bishops and abbots –
the holy warriors of the Heavenly Soldiers of Christ.
Another important figure is the
Master of the Vyšší Brod Altarpiece.
His name emanates from a cycle of nine pictures of Christ’s life, which
was originally an order intended for the monastery in Vyšší Brod. With
his work he became a founding figure of the "beautiful style", which
dominated European output around 1400, particularly that which was
produced by royal courts.
Mannerism
Bizarreness fascinated Emperor Rudolph II. Perhaps this is why he chose the Italian
Giuseppe Arcimboldo
(1532-1593) as his court painter. His distinctive artistic expression
encompassed allegorical heads symbolizing the seasons and individuals
composed of various items - vegetables, fruit, fish, etc. He even
depicted the emperor himself in this way with a
portrait of Rudolph II as Vertumnus created from flowers and fruit.
Rudolph
II was surrounded by German and Dutch painters and sculptors, who were
mostly trained in Italy. These also included three master artists:
Bartholomeus Spranger, Hans van Aachen and Adrian de Vries.
The painter Bartholomeus Spranger (1546-1611), who was commissioned to
do a cycle of mythological pictures inspired by Ovidius’ and the amorous
adventures of Venus, the excellent portraitist Hans van Aachen, and the
sculptor Adrian de Vries, whose works adorned the garden of Wallenstein
Palace until they were stolen by Swedish troops in 1648.
Baroque art in the Czech lands
Painters and sculptors strived to
depict their protagonists’ state of mind (pain, joy, surprise, fear, concentration)
as convincingly as possible and bring them closer to the viewer.
One of the greatest Baroque masters was
Petr Brandl
(1668-1735), the author of many large altar pictures. All the
characters in his biblical scenes are animate, and are often shown in
extreme emotional situations, but this is always done convincingly.
His friend and peer
Jan Kupecký(1667-1740)
was close to him in his conception. In his portraits, Kupecký managed
to perfectly capture the appearance of a person and his character
traits.
The graphic artist
Václav Hollar (1607-77) is a peculiar figure in Baroque art in Europe. His pictorial
views of European cities
attain a high artistic standard and documentary value. Because of his
faith, he belonged to the large group of exiles who had to abandon
Bohemia. He settled in England, where he became acquainted with the
paintings of Rembrandt and other important artists, whose work he
transposed into graphic form. He created a number of free art prints
with allegories of the seasons.
The two faces of Czech Baroque
sculpture are represented by two workshops with a different concept of
statues, who competed with each other for orders in Prague.
Ferdinand Maxmilián Brokoff
(1688-1731) is one of the members of a long family tradition. His
monumental statues give a calm and contemplative impression. At the same
time, they are full of internal tension expressed through restrained
gesticulation.
Conversely, the works of
Matthias Bernard Braun
(1684-1738) have an unsettling effect. The sculptor also emphasised
exalted moments with tense theatrical gestures and rich folds of
clothes. Both the representative of the local tradition and Braun, who
came to Prague from Austria, gave the statues on Charles Bridge their
present-day appearance. The most famous is Brokoff’s
statuary of the Saints John of Matha, Felix of Valois and Ivan
(sousoší sv. Jana z Mathy, Felixe z Valois a Ivana), with the very
realistic figure of a Turk guarding Christians, and Braun’s Vision of
St. Luthgard (Vidění sv. Luitgardy).
Classicism
Antonín Mánes (1784-1843)
is the most famous figure of classicist painting. His work underwent a
colorful evolution from composed classicist landscapes with ancient
temples to romantically ragged scenery with ruins and stormy clouds, and
ending up with very realistic landscapes with natural daylight.
The nation for itself
The
second half of the 19th century saw a massive economic boom in the
Czech lands, which were part of the state ruled by the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy. Patriotic sentiments were put in concrete terms with the
construction of the
National Theater in Prague in the years 1868-83 and the home of art – the
Rudolfinum –
in 1885. This focused the attention and interest of artists known as
the National Theater generation. These included important sculptors
Bohumil Schnirch (triga above the entrance),
Antonín Wagner (the muses - goddess of arts and science) and
Josef Václav Myslbek (the bronze statue of Music), painters
František Ženíšek (painting decorations of interiors),
Mikoláš Aleš (proposal of 14 lunettes named Vlast - Homeland),
Vojtěch Hynajs (author of the stage curtain) and others.
Romantism
The romantic works of painter
Josef Navrátil (1798-1865)
was of a European standard. He had perfect control of color, through
which he was able to animate a rococo fountain, still life or a bouquet
in a vase. The decoration of the chateau at Jirny, which was done in the
Second Rococo style in 1857, is one of the pinnacles of his
achievements in mural painting.
Josef Mánes
(1820-71) was the antipole of Navrátil. He painted landscapes, portraits
and genre pictures. The result of his studies is the calendar disc of
Prague’s Astronomical Clock from 1866.
Realism
The extensive work of
Josef Václav Myslbek (1848-1922)
represents the apex of Czech sculpture of the 19th century overlapping
into the 20th. Myslbek’s principal works, however, are the statue of
Music in the foyer of the National Theater and the St. Wenceslas
monument on Wenceslas Square in Prague.
The realist period harbors one other outstanding artistic figure – Antonín
Chittussi (1847-91).
He saw his own concept of the landscape in vivid terrain, in the
disorderly nature of a segment of reality, and in natural diffuse light.
He was fascinated by the landscape of South Bohemia and of the Bohemian
and Moravian Highlands. In particular, his smaller pictures replete
with quick, easy brushstrokes are among the jewels of Czech painting.
Impressionism, symbolism, Art Nouveau
The
National Theater generation, which was imbued with patriotic feelings
and the need to celebrate the national past, was supplanted by the
generation of the 1890s, united under the umbrella of the
Mánes association of artists.
They did not want to be severed from the roots of the home-based
tradition; they merely wanted to enrich it so as to also embrace new
modern impulses in international art. The stylistic unity of the group
fragmented. Several small movements evolved, particularly in the fine
arts. They destroyed all the old trends and pulled against academic
rigidity. Impressionism and symbolism were borne of this spirit.
Antonín Slavíček
(1870-1910) stands at the beginning of modern Czech landscape painting.
In his pictures, he didn’t just portray visual atmospheric phenomena,
but strived for an expression of the destinies of people and the inner
substance of the landscape.
Symbolism first manifested itself in the sculptural work of the mystically oriented
František Bílek (1872-1941). His statues express the tragedy of life and at the same time they are a common symbol of human existence.
Jan Preisler
(1872-1918) was a leading figure of the generation of the 1890s, who
links both symbolism and impressionist influences in his work.
Preisler’s pictures, namely
Černé jezero (Black lake) and
Pohádka (Fairytale), give a mysterious, enigmatic and sad impression.
Max Švábinský
(1873-1962) was a virtuoso draughtsman, graphic designer and painter.
He created colored line drawings. The list of his activities is long: He
was the founder of a school of graphic arts, the first professor of a
special graphic arts section at the Academy in Prague, an excellent
portraitist, painter, sketcher, illustrator and a creator of stamps and
bank notes. In addition, he was also the author of several monumental
works.
A kind of second wave of symbolism, which took place
before the First World War, is associated with the Sursum society in the
Czech milieu. “Dream work” was the creative principle. Sursum comprised
figures such as
Jan Zrzavý and
Josef Váchal (1884-1969), major names of Czech modern art.
Decorative Art Nouveau
The name of
Alfons Mucha
(1860-1939) reverberates when you mention Art Nouveau. Awareness of the
work of this painter quickly spread beyond the borders of the Czech
lands. It even appealed to the people of Paris. This was where he
designed theater programs and posters in the 1890s for the celebrated
actress Sarah Bernhardt and her Renaissance theater, which captivated
the Parisian public.
You can see an example of Art
Nouveau sculpture on Prague’s Old Town Square if you look at the Jan Hus
monument by sculptor Ladislav Šaloun (1870-1946), or the František
Palacký statue by Stanislav Sucharda (1866-1916). Together
with Myslbek’s St. Wenceslas, which was not completed until 1924, these
are monumental works beyond comparison in Czech sculpture.
Expressionism
The explosion of expressionism is associated with the names of
Emil Filla,Bohumil Kubišta and
Antonín Procházka.
Czech cubism
It represents a pinnacle in architecture and applied art, which has never been achieved elsewhere.
The fact that
Emil Filla and
Bohumil Kubišta are
among the most robust figures of Czech cubism brooks no argument.
Filla’s work even contains a strong reflection on both military
conflicts. He had his own experience in the Buchenwald concentration
camp, which affected him deeply. He produced what is perhaps his best
cubist still life during his stay in Holland in the years 1914-18, where
Dutch painting of the 17th century made a big impression on him.
Bohumil Kubišta was
a passionate defender of modern art and a critic of the old styles. He
built on his deep knowledge of optics and the physiology of vision,
which he then applied to elaborate canvas compositions.
Antonín Procházka
made the beauty and poetry of everyday things apparent. His distinctive
work is based on a feeling for beautiful painting material. He used old
techniques of painting with the aid of hot wax (encaustic) to express
himself.
The essence of
Josef Čapek ’s
personality (1887-1945) consisted of deep social feeling and humanism.
It was because of his opinions and political activity that he was
arrested by the Nazis in 1939 and deported to a concentration camp.
Otto Gutfreund
(1889-1927) occupied a privileged position in cubist sculpture. His
statues correspond to parallel trends in painting. His polychrome
sculptures, which had no parallel in world sculpture at that time, bear
witness to the difficulty of man, civilization and work.
Landscape painting of the interwar period
Important landscape painters of the interwar period included
Rudolf Kremlička (1886-1932), as well as artists whose work has a more modern feel, such as
Václav Špála and
Jan Zrzavý (1890-1977).
Enigmatic orphism
František Kupka
(1871-1957) began with geometrical abstraction. His concept is called
orphism. It expresses a musical rhythm through the motion of a colored
line or the dynamic gradation of colored areas.
Besides this world-renowned figure, several other Czech painters devoted themselves to abstract painting in this period, e.g.
Vojtěch Preissig (1873-1944) and
František Foltýn (1891-1976).
The 1930s' spirit of surrealism
The
paradox of the life of Czech surrealism is the fact that its painters
and theorists were not only persecuted during the occupation but also by
the communists in the 1950s. Subsequently, the
Ra Group was probably most associated with surrealism. The most celebrated pair of painters is indisputably
Jindřich Štyrský (1899-1942) and
Toyen (1902-1980).
Within
the framework of international surrealism, credit belongs to Styrsky as
one of the first to concern himself with color collage and for the fact
that he systematically investigated dreams as an inspiration for
artistic work. Apart from dreams, the fields of eroticism, aggressive
imagination and black humor were also touched on in his work.
Toyen (whose
real name was Marie Čermínová) was a key European-caliber figure of
surrealist avant-garde art. Moreover, she was a rebel with a huge
imagination. Using the resources typical of surrealist art, she
succeeded in expressing the senselessness and absurdity of war.
Josef Šíma (1891-1971)
is associated with France and surrealist imagery. His pictures
introduce us to a mysterious stillness where rocks transform into living
beings, floating weightlessly, while inanimate things take on living
forms.
The wartime 1940s
The
war affected the nature of Czech art in the 1940s and caused a tendency
toward experimentation in the direction of new humanist subjects.
Artists had to encipher art into symbols because they were addressing a
state of existential distress. Artists of the
older generation (Filla, Čapek) encountered the
younger generation
on this platform. The younger artists began to discreetly appear on the
scene under the patronage of the avant-garde E. F. Burian theater at
the turn of the 1930s and '40s.
Three important groups of artists gradually formed who brought artistic life to the new great themes of civilization.
Skupina 42
- "Group 42" (František Gross, Kamil Lhoták, Jan Kotík) endeavored to
depict the role of the individual in modern civilization, which changes
man into a mere machine and steals his distinctive individuality. An
all-embracing vision of destruction was encoded into the program of the
Skupina Ra
- "Ra Group". Its work was most intertwined with the imaginative line
of Czech pre-war art, e.g. Václav Tikal, Bohdan Lacina and Josef Istler.
The
Sedm v říjnu
