Czechoslovakian Realism #1
The troubled path of an art that reflected on the regime society in Czechoslovakia from 1940s to 1980s
Weaving factory (1980) by Alena ČermákováEleutheria Foundation
The Art understands the intimacy of people
The Art understands the intimacy of people, especially when it is crushed by political totalitarianisms. When the propaganda strikes the human souls, the artists become witnesses of a feeling of rebellion which, even if subjected to diktats, is charged with new inspirations.
Condemned 1 (1970) by Vladimir ŠoltaEleutheria Foundation
A difficult path between new solutions and concepts
The works represent the difficult path of an art, such as the Czechoslovakian one from the 40s to the 80s, which underlines the strength of artists not to deprive themselves of new technical concepts and to reinvent themselves in new solutions albeit at the service of the state.
The avant-guard group "Devětsil"
In the 1920s, the artists Karel Teige, Jaroslav Seifert and Vítězslav Nezval founded an avant-garde group (Devětsil) with the aim of promoting proletarian art because: "It's about giving society a new type of man".
Teige wrote in 1922: "We wish to speak of it (of proletarian art) not only as a social fact, but above all as art, therefore a sector of human work, to establish and specify the tasks and duties that the present revolutionary imposes to the artist".
From that moment on, Czech art began to speak the language of that "new man" through its environments, the result of the industrial power of the Czechoslovakian territory after the First World War.
From the 1930s the common man emerged as a hero of social and economic development. In painting as in sculpture, artists portrayed individuals, such as workers in industries, foundries, mines, urban construction sites.
Miner (1948) by Vilém WünscheEleutheria Foundation
An example are the paintings by Vilém Wünsche (1900-1984) called Miners, made between the 30s and 40s: the lamps lit, the pickaxe in hand, the trousers all patched up, intent on digging.
Forge T345 (1949) by Jaroslav K. HolečekEleutheria Foundation
1934
On 1934 the manifesto of socialist realism exhibited by Gorkij at the I Congress of Soviet Writers: the guidelines of the realism were codified which provided that every work of art had a strong national spirit and inspired devotion to the homeland and to class consciousness.
The landscapes told in the paintings are strategic territories, important from an economic point of view and therefore end up having a political significance, as theorized by Jiří Kotalík of the Skupina 42 artistic group founded together with Jindřich Chalupecký.
Texts by Dr. Flavio R.G. Mela (Coordinator of Eleutheria Foundation)
Photos by Ivan Bárta, Alessandro Bianchi, Jan Brunclík
