Obhájce moderního umění

Jindřich Chalupecký in the context of the 1930s and 1940s.

Jindřich Chalupecký undoubtedly belongs to the most influential figures of the Czech art world of the second half of the 20th century, yet his position in domestic cultural history has not yet been sufficiently evaluated. The presented publication therefore wants to be the first step on the way to the evaluation of Chalupecký's theoretical-critical work and at the same time strives to make it visible on the reception horizon of the wider public. The book begins with the first phase of the author's intellectual activity (the period of the 1930s and 1940s), thereby laying the foundations for possible follow-up research. It contains a representative anthology of Chalupecký's magazine texts that did not appear in the collections Defense of Art (1991) or Cestou necesto (2000) and thus function as their supplement. Furthermore, the book includes a pictorial appendix, a significantly updated author's bibliography of the given period and, above all, an introductory study placing his thinking in the contemporary context, which is done through comparison with the work of Zdenek Rykr, Karel, Václav Černý, Kamil Bednář or Václav Navrátil. The study maps Chalupecký's thought development from early juvenile reviews through philosophically oriented essays from the pre-war and war period to the cultural-political states of the Third Republic. Attention is paid in particular to the critically crystallized concept of modern art, as it was formed in interaction with the avant-garde, existentialism or socialism, a special accent is then placed on the modern mythology of the commonplace, so inspiring for Chalupecký's colleagues from Group 42, a category of transcendence that the author repeatedly deals with . In this way, Chalupecký is presented as an original thinker with a wide intellectual scope, whose main theme is the nature of modern art and its function in society. Teiga Similar to the other volumes of the Skrytá moderna edition, the publication aims to plasticize the image of Czech modernism of the first half of the 20th century and stimulates a new way of thinking about this multi-layered phenomenon.