Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

At the beginning of the 1930s, the collector and businessman Joe Hloucha presented his collection of non-European art at a sale exhibition in Prague’s Trade Fair Palace. This was the most extensive show to date in the Czech milieu to showcase the original art of Sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, pre-Columbian America and Asia. Several months later, the exhibition was repeated in Berlin. That same year, Hloucha was contacted by the painter Emil Filla, who, starting at the end of the 1920s, systematically built his own collection of non-European art, including almost all of the prominent world cultures, from the prehistoric times to the present. 

At the end of 1934, Filla visited Hloucha again, this time with a proposal to organize an exhibition of Hloucha's collection in the Mánes Association's building. Hloucha recorded the course of the visit in his diary: “In the morn[ing] waiting for the painter Filla, who came at 10:45 instead of 10. He looked at everything and suggested that I exhibit my primit[ive] collection in February at Mánes. But I would gain no profit from it, nothing. He wanted to buy various things - Persian, Gandhara, primit[ive], a South-Bohemian Madonna, etc. He also fancied my Goth[ic] Mad[onna]. I hope she won't let any of that happen.” [Hloucha 1935, record from 20. 12. 1934].

During Filla's further visits to Hloucha, the two eventually set the date of the exhibition and other details. Filla bought a few artworks from Hloucha for his own collection. The African and Oceanic arti-facts from Hloucha's collection ended up being exhibited alongside Filla's own works, which were installed in separate rooms and did not blend with Hloucha's collection. 
In his text for the exhibition's catalogue, Vincenc Kramář captured the quality of the relationships between Filla's works and the artifacts from Hloucha's collection. Kramář pointed out Filla's works’ similarity to the primary manifestations of human creativity. He compared Filla's sculptures – “monstrous figures” –  to prehistoric art and children's drawings, emphasizing their revolutionary humanistic content, in contrast to conventional art. He found the reflection of the African and Oceanic art in Filla's formal approach: “All these sculptures employ and move along a line between the two poles – on the one side, architectonics working with surfaces the way negro sculpture does, and on the other, shapeless volume, or artifact on one side, and on the other, something organically grown.” [Kramář 1935, p. 12].

The exhibition elicited a strong public response and was much discussed in the press. Hloucha himself wrote an article for Světozor and the poet Josef Hora conducted an interview with him for the daily A–Zet. The exhibition was also filmed. All of the reviews focused on comparing Filla's works with non-European artifacts. The authors often discussed stereotypical ideas about the authenticity, genuineness and originality of non-European “primitive” art, which they placed in opposition to modernism, designating the latter as an unoriginal and decadent artistic approach based on rationality, disconnected from instinctive “primitive” creativity. 

During the show, almost all of its reviewers missed a particular unplanned event. To ensure that the SVU Mánes great hall did not remain empty, the association decided to extend the exhibition that was taking place there by 14 days. As this happened to be the first exhibition of the Surrealist Group in Czechoslovakia, a triangle of sorts was created, with points connected by close relationships. While Surrealist shows abroad often featured non-European, “primitive” art, this was the only, and indirect, encounter of Surrealism with non-European art after the founding of the Surrealist Group in Czechoslovakia in 1934. Filla must have appreciated this juxtaposition. He supported Surrealism, and it was reflected in his works after 1930.

In terms of both the quantity and quality of African and Oceanic sculpture, the joint presentation of Hloucha's collection and Emil Filla’s works was unique in the Czech art world, and no such exhibition was ever held again. This makes the show an important venture into “primitivism” – a direct encounter with and response to the native cultures of America, Africa and Oceania.

Tomáš Winter

Works Cited

Hloucha 1935: Deník Joe Hlouchy, Archiv Náprstkova muzea asijských afrických a oceánských kultur v Praze, archiv Joe Hlouchy, inv. no. 10/1
Kramář 1935: Vincenc Kramář, Grafické listy a plastika Emila Filly, in: Emil Filla – Plastika, suché jehly, lepty, dřevoryty, litografie, oleje. Černošská a tichomořská plastika – 185 soch ze sbírky Joe Hlouchy (exh. cat.), SVU Mánes v Praze 1935, pp. 10–11

Further Reading

[Joe Hloucha], Plastiky dvou světů, Světozor XXXV, 1935, no. 6, 7. 2., p. 89
[Josef Hora], K výstavě africké a tichomořské plastiky v Mánesu, A–Zet [VIII], 1935, no. 25, 6. 2., [p. 4]
Josef Kandert, Počátky sběratelství etnického umění v českých zemích, Umění XXXVII, 1989, pp. 187–190 
Tomáš Winter, Nebezpečné sousedství? Joe Hloucha, Emil Filla a surrealisté, Umění LIII, 2005, no. 1, pp. 76–86
Tomáš Winter, Palmy na Vltavě. Primitivismus, mimoevropské kultury a české výtvarné umění 1850–1950, Řevnice – Plzeň – Praha 2013, pp. 184–235 
Tomáš Winter (ed.), Zajatec kubismu. Dílo Emila Filly v zrcadle výtvarné kritiky (1907–1953), Praha 2004, pp. 47–56

Archival Sources

Prague City Archives, Fond Spolek výtvarných umělců Mánes, Výstavní činnost, 4190, Filla, Černošská a tichomořská plastika, 1935 

anonymous author, Sochařská výstava malíře Filly, A-Zet, 1935, 7. 2., in: Archive of the National Gallery Prague, fonds Moderní galerie (1902–1942), Výstřižkové knihy k výstavám, umělcům a činnosti MG i jiných galerií, acquisition no. 939, book no. 8 (1934–1935)

anonymous author, Černošské sochy v Praze, Večerní České slovo Mladá Boleslav, 1935, 8. 2., in: Archive of the National Gallery Prague, fonds Moderní galerie (1902–1942), Výstřižkové knihy k výstavám, umělcům a činnosti MG i jiných galerií, acquisition no. 939, book no. 8 (1934–1935)

anonymous author, Výstava černošských soch ze sbírky známého cestovatele Joe Hlouchy, Pražské noviny, 1935, 22. 2., in: Archive of the National Gallery Prague, fonds Moderní galerie (1902–1942), Výstřižkové knihy k výstavám, umělcům a činnosti MG i jiných galerií, acquisition no. 939, book no. 8 (1934–1935)