Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

The 1921 exhibition of the Prague School of Architecture Student Association in Prague's Jeruzalémská Street stands out among the regular shows held by students of art and architecture in the era of the late Austro-Hungarian monarchy and interwar Czechoslovakia. The student association had been protesting against conservatism in architectural instruction at Prague's technical university since its inception in 1900. The association temporarily disbanded in 1910, resuming its oppositional activity a decade later [Pencák 2008]. The unusually numerous references to the exhibition in both professional periodicals and the daily press appreciated the collective appearance of the young rebels who sought their models outside the academic milieu. Key aspects of this exhibition include the fact that it showcased architects who would become dominant figures on the Czech architectural scene well into the following decades.

The show featured about 300 exhibits: architectural drawings, paintings, ceramic and metal applied-art objects, stage design drawings, and drawings from the excursion of the Architecture Student Association to Slovakia in 1920. Detailed reviews of the exhibition appeared in the magazine Drobné umění (authored by Jan E. Koula, a fellow student to the exhibiting artists) and in the daily Rudé právo, signed by the mark “i.” Emil Pacovský and Josef Čapek wrote notable reviews in Veraikon and Lidové noviny respectively. An extensive recollection of the show appears in Ze života avantgardy [From the Life of the Avant-Garde, 1963], the memoirs of the architect Karel Honzík. Reproductions of exhibited artworks, marked as artworks from the exhibition of the Architecture Students' Association, were published in the magazine Style [Style] (vol. VII, 1921-1922, fig. LVI and LVII) and they could also be found in the 1921 issues of Veraikon and Drobné umění and in later monographs of the show's participants such as Vít Obrtel (1985), Jaroslav Fragner (1999) and Adolf Benš (2014), the latter of which contains Fragner's and Benš's design from the competition for the show's poster. In all likelihood, the exhibition had no catalogue. Studentský věstník [Students' Bulletin] from March 15, 1921 briefly defined the program this way: “[the exhibition] is meant to showcase the students' independent efforts (works made under the supervision of professors are excluded); it is a part of the ideological struggle that the students have been waging for some time now” [anonymous author 1921, p. 2].

In his review, Koula concluded that the most mature works were those that followed the example of Josef Plečnik and Jan Kotěra, namely the projects by Adolf Benš, František Fiala and Vladimír Wallenfels, who enrolled in Kotěra's studio at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in the fall of 1921 [K 1921, p. 131]. In contrast, the anonymous author writing under the mark “i” in Rudé právo – probably the poet Ivan Suk, a member of Devětsil – characterizes this group as “right wingers” manifesting good quality without innovation [i 1921, p. 8]. Referring to another distinctive part of the exhibition, Koula writes that the “naive, melancholy architectures” by Devětsil's founding members Josef Havlíček and Alois Wachsman, “seemed to build on the heavy, fluent shapes of Vl[astislav] Hofman.” However, says Koula, the numerous variations on the same idea weakened the final effect. Havlíček and Wachsman's applied art object designed for the Artěl cooperative made a more lively impression on Koula [K 1921, p. 131]. The reviewer “i” from Rudé právo considered Havlíček and Wachsman's works the highlight of the exhibition. He particularly valued Havlíček's painting Two Girls with a Dog and his architectural experiments which , according to “i,” strove to “introduce an organic order of sorts in place of the construction” [i 1921, p. 8].

Jaroslav Fragner, Karel Honzík, Evžen Linhart and Vít Obrtel represented the third distinctive group at the exhibition. Soon after its end, these architects began to call themselves The Purist Four and in 1923, they all joined Devětsil. Both Koula and “i” criticize the group for drawing too much on the work of prominent Czech Cubists and Rondocubists such as Hofman, Kroha, Janák and Gočár, and on the stern geometrical designs by Josef Chochol  [K 1921, p. 131; i 1921, p. 8]. According to “i,” only Linhart's creativity and inventiveness saved the group from coming across as somewhat imitative. In his review for Lidové noviny, Josef Čapek evaluated the whole exhibition in a similar vein, albeit with more appreciation: “It is too early to speak of independent, breakthrough work here. Rather, this is an attentive and earnest apprenticeship that already shows signs of a few courageous talents (…).“ [jč 1921, p. 9]

In contrast to Koula's respect for Plečnik and Kotěra as models to follow, all other reviewers of the exhibition sympathized with Cubism. For this reason, they largely focused on the way the style manifested itself in the exhibited artifacts and searched for words that would help them to truly “feel” the Cubist shapes. At this point, critics had yet to find the right terms for tendencies toward a more progressive purism, represented at the exhibition by the works of Evžen Linhart and Vít Obrtel. Only Koula was able to notice these tendencies and he believed they were an imitation of the austere projects that Josef Chochol had presented at the third exhibition of the Tvrdošíjní (The Obstinate) group, organized shortly before the Architecture Students' Association show. Chochol's works were then reproduced in the second volume of the almanac Musaion [K 1921, p. 131]. In his 1963 recollections, Karel Honzík could, in hindsight, see these early examples of the purist style as the exhibition's most important feature: “It is possible to say – without much historiographic license – that Czech purism began there, at the student exhibition, in 1921 (…)” [Honzík 1963, pp. 10–11]. Today, we shy away from preferring one -ism to another and instead ask questions such as: What did the show's participants expect from their respective styles of choice? What formal and symbolical relations were crystallizing between these -isms at this point in history?

Rostislav Švácha

Works Cited

anonymous author 1921: anonymous author, Členská výstava Spolku posluchačů Vys. školy architektury v Praze, Studentský věstník I, 1920–1921, no. 18–19, 20. 5., Organization appendix, p. 2

Honzík 1963: Karel Honzík, Ze života avantgardy, Praha 1963

i 1921: i [Ivan Suk?], Výstava „Spolku posluchačů architektury“ (Weinertova aukční síň v Jerusalémské ulici), Rudé právo II, 1921, no. 123, 28. 5., p. 8

jč 1921: -jč.- [Josef Čapek], Členská výstava Spolku posluchačů Vysoké školy architektury, Lidové noviny XXIX, 1921, no. 259, 26. 5., p. 9

K 1921: K [Jan E. Koula], Výstava Spolku posluchačů architektury, Drobné umění II, 1921, p. 131

Pencák 2008: Marcel Pencák, Nástup architektonické moderny a c. k. Česká vysoká škola technická, Umění LVI, 2008, pp. 514 –528

Further Reading

Benjamin Fragner (ed.), Jaroslav Fragner: Náčrty a plány, Prague 1999, pp. 18–24

Karel Honzík, Od kubismu k purismu, Československý architekt IV, 1958, no. 6, p. 5

Karel Honzík, Od kubismu k purismu, Československý architekt IV, 1958, no. 7, p. 5

Karel Honzík, Od kubismu k purismu, Československý architekt IV, 1958, no. 8, p. 5

Karel Honzík, Od kubismu k purismu, Československý architekt IV, 1958, no. 9, p. 4

Mahulena Nešlehová (ed.) – Jiří Hilmera – Rostislav Švácha, Vlastislav Hofman, Prague 2004, p. 347

Vít Obrtel, Vlaštovka, která má geometrické hnízdo: Projekty a texty (eds. Rudolf Matys – Rostislav Švácha), Prague 1985, pp. 30–35 and 312

Vladimír Šlapeta, Kubismus v architektuře, in: Alexander von Vegesack (ed.), Český kubismus: Architektura a design 1910–1925, Weil am Rhein 1991, pp. 34–52 and 180

Vladimír Šlapeta, Adolf Benš (1894–1982): Architektonické dílo, Praha 2014, pp. 10–11 and 19

Anonymous author, Umění výtvarné, Studentský věstník I, 1920–1921, no. 16–17, 18. 4., p. 17

Anonymous author, Z technického sboru, Studentský věstník I, 1920–1921, no. 15, 22. 3., Organization appendix, pp. 2–3