První výstava Skupiny surrealistů v ČSR | Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820

Commentary

Although surrealism attracted a number of Czech artists in the 1930s, when Vítězslav Nezval first founded the Surrealist Group in Czechoslovakia on March 21, 1934, he invited only three of them: Jindřich Štyrský and Toyen, his close friends who had been among the prominent members of Devětsil in the 1920s, and the sculptor Vincenc Makovský whose works from this period rank among the top examples of European avant-garde. The trio then prepared The First Exhibition of the Surrealist Group in Czechoslovakia, held at the beginning of 1935 in the Functionalist Mánes building in Prague.

The connection between the small avant-garde group and the inter-generational, modernist Mánes Fine Arts Association was not accidental. Makovský joined Mánes in 1930, while Štyrský and Toyen became members in December 1932 based on their participation in the exhibition Poesie 1932, which leaned strongly toward Surrealism. On March 22, 1934, one day after the founding of the Surrealist Group in Czechoslovakia, the Mánes committee decided that an exhibition of Toyen, Štyrský and Makovský would be held in a half of the Mánes building's small hall. On November 29, 1934, Štyrský sent an official request for permission to use the entire small hall for the exhibition of the Surrealist group, beginning on January 15, 1935. Nezval and Adolf Hoffmeister were simultaneously planning a concurrent exhibition of international Surrealism in the great hall, which would be prepared by André Breton. However, during the Mánes committee meeting on December 6, Nezval, who was present as a guest, informed the committee that Breton had agreed to assemble a Surrealist collection in Paris, but the Parisian Surrealists were unable to pay for packaging and insurance as requested by the Czech side. Mánes postponed the project for financial reasons and never returned to it again. On January 10, 1935, immediately before the exhibition of Prague Surrealists was scheduled to open, the Mánes committee decided to move it to the great hall which would otherwise have remained empty. The association's sympathy toward Surrealism was also manifested in the fact that on January 17, 1935, other members of the Surrealist Group in Czechoslovakia (not visual artists) were elected active members of Mánes. These included the poets Vítězslav Nezval and Konstantin Biebl, the composer Jaroslav Ježek, and the theatre director Jindřich Honzl, as well as other Surrealist-leaning figures such as Záviš Kalandra and E. F. Burian.

Vincenc Makovský was represented by three sculptures and two reliefs from the period between 1932 and 1935, while Toyen and Štyrský focused exclusively on their works from 1934, in which they manifested their adherence to Surrealism. Toyen prepared a set of 24 paintings; Štyrský's collection was the largest: it contained 22 oil paintings, 66 collages from the series The Moving Cabinet (one of them was reproduced on the exhibition catalogue's cover as a line drawing) and 74 photographs sorted into the series Frog Man and The Man with Blinkers on His Eyes. In the Czech milieu, this was the first time photography was featured as part of the visual avant-garde to such an extent. Vítězslav Nezval, too, originally considered exhibiting his photographs and creating his own collages, but at the last minute, he removed his work from the exhibition list [Potůček 2004, p. 78]. The opening on Tuesday, January 15 at 6.15 pm gave the Surrealist Group's speakers Teige and Nezval an opportunity to present the Surrealist agenda. Both delivered long speeches, in large part published published in the catalogue along with Nezval's Surrealist interpretation of individual paintings in the form of short prose poems. Volné směry also published an excerpt from Nezval's speech.

The reactions to the exhibition were contradictory. Josef Čapek warned in Lidové noviny that ordinary viewers would be outraged because surrealist activities deliberately defied established standards. He himself focused on Štyrský's collages, which he did not see as a manifestation of revolutionary frenzy, as Teige did, but rather as a legacy of decadence; other critics associated them directly with pornography. Štyrský's photographs, however, were received positively by several reviewers, even though these critics denounced the rest of the show. Almost all of the reviewers agreed that the paintings were flat, shallow and depressing, although Vojtěch Volavka argued that even Surrealists could paint well, as Šíma and Miró had proved, unlike Štyrský and Toyen [Volavka 1935]. Jindřich Chalupecký, too, expressed his reservations about Štyrský in particular, but also about Toyen, in the last of his Ten Points to Surrealism, where he also praised the work of Vincenc Makovský [Chalupecký 1935].

The exhibition was originally scheduled to end on February 3 (894 people had visited it by then and 522 catalogues had been sold), but it was extended by two weeks until February 17. In his letter dated February 3, Nezval informed André Breton about the show's progress: “Our exhibition... was extended despite the fact that all the bourgeois critics were opposed to it. Yesterday, for instance, I gave a tour to around 150 young people who asked for my commentary, and not long ago almost that many came to see it, showing keen interest. [Nezval 1981, p. 77]

The exhibition outraged the Functionalist architects Josef Havlíček and Karel Honzík, who even threatened to resign from the Mánes Association, protesting art rejecting order and discipline. They were also angered by Nezval's exclamation in the Surrealist manifesto declaring the end of the “architecture for the buttocks” [Nezval 1974, p. 74]. The Mánes Committee replied that the association aimed for the versatility of artistic expression, which was traditionally considered its strength, and that one exhibition's focus was not a reason for members to leave. In line with this statement, Mánes continued to provide space for Surrealist publication activities and lectures, culminating in André Breton's lecture The Surrealist Situation of the Object – The Situation of The Surrealist Object (Surrealism in Poetry and Painting) which he read to a completely full Mánes great hall on March 29, 1935. Prepared especially for Prague audiences, the lecture appreciated the work of the Prague Surrealist group in its introduction.

Lenka Bydžovská

Works Cited

Chalupecký 1935: Jindřich Chalupecký, Deset bodů k nadrealismu, Čin VII, 1935, no. 6, 14. 3., pp. 86–88

Nezval 1974: Vítězslav Nezval, Surrealismus v ČSR, in: idem, Dílo XXV. Manifesty, eseje a kritické projevy z let 1931–1941, ed. Milan Blahynka, Praha 1974, pp. 69–78

Nezval 1981: Vítězslav Nezval, Depeše z konce tisíciletí. Korespondence Vítězslava Nezvala, ed. Marie Krulichová – Milena Vinaříková – Lubomír Tomek, Praha 1981

Potůček 2004: Jakub Potůček, Fotografie, „jež prostě stačilo dát zvětšiti“, in: David Voda (ed.), Hra v kostky. Vítězslav Nezval a výtvarné umění (exh. cat.), Muzeum umění Olomouc 2004

Volavka 1935: V. V. [Vojtěch Volavka], Výtvarnictví. Skupina surréalistů v ČSR v „Mánesu“, Program (Demokratický střed) I (XII), 1935, no. 3, 25. 1., p. 5

Archival Sources

City of Prague Archives, Fonds Spolek výtvarných umělců Mánes, Výstavní činnost, Složky jednotlivých výstav Exhibitions, Files of the Individual Exhibitions], inv. no. 4189, sign. 4.1, file 73 – Skupina surrealistů v ČSR [the Surrealist Group in Czechoslovakia]

http://katalog.ahmp.cz/pragapublica/permalink?xid=77C16466220E11E0823600166F1163D4