Eagle Rips Eagle: Emil Filla, Chinese Art and Totalitarian Phantoms

The book focuses on the post-war work of the Czech painter, sculptor and theorist Emil Filla (1882-1953) and his relationship to Chinese art and communist ideology. It describes Filla's unique collection of Chinese art and presents its origins. It also provides a reflection on Filla's understanding of Far Eastern painting, which was reflected in his writings on Chinese landscape painting and his later paintings. It is these that receive increased attention, especially in terms of the attitude towards them taken by the representatives of the Communist regime, whose often vulgarising views deeply and unfortunately affected the artist's life and work. Filla faced various forms of persecution, yet he managed to remain a professor at the Academy of Arts and Crafts in Prague until the end of his life. The book is published on the occasion of the opening of a new exhibition in the Emil Filla Memorial Hall at Peruc Castle, which provided the artist with a summer retreat and played a significant role in his later activities.