The End of the Avant-garde? From the Munich Treaty to the Communist Takeover. Czech Art 1938-1948

This lengthy monograph surveys Czech art in the years between 1938 and 1948 and does so with an unusual approach: It contrasts the Czech art that emerged in these dramatic years with the debased level of culture of the environment they came out of, that is, in the ideological milieu of the Nazi regime and the post-war era leading up to the February revolution. It was mainly the work of very young artists in this period that managed to retain an inner freedom, as they broke with their artistic predecessors, rejected the role assigned to art under the avant-garde vision of the world, and even questioned Modernism. Their work was based on a highly personal attitude to existence in the ‘here and now’. After the war it became apparent that the history of modern art was not yet over and the avant-garde was not yet done with it either. However, the hope that culture would re-conquer the now liberated public space was definitively quashed by the communist coup. The more than fifty famous or now forgotten painters, photographers, and sculptors presented on these pages include such names as František Hudeček, Bohumír Matal, Vilém Reichmann, Alex Beran, Václav Bartovský, Ota Janeček, Franz Peter Kien, František Gross, Jan Smetana, Alén Diviš, Karel Šourek, Pavel Laška, Jan Bauch, Václav Chad, Čestmír Kafka, Toyen, Jindřich Štyrský, Václav Tikal, Václav Zykmund, Josef Istler. The book’s unusual design and content, combining studies devoted to basic themes of art history with boxes that focus on basic concepts in cultural history, and hand-pasted into the book are texts describing the ‘fates’ of the artists drawn from the catalogue published to accompany the exhibition ‘Art tchécoslovaque 1938–1946’, which was held at Galerie la Boëtie in Paris in June 1946, which was organised by Josef Šíma and Paul Eluard. The book also contains a list of so-called degenerate artists in Czechoslovakia, appearing here for the first time in print.