Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

Throughout the 1920s, the programming of the Fine Arts Association (Krasoumná jednota) alternated between survey exhibitions of art associations, monographic exhibitions devoted to prominent individuals or foreign guests, and combined joint exhibitions presenting the current work of three or four artists. The first two types typically ran for three to four weeks. Joint exhibitions of individual artists were generally shorter at two weeks. They were sometimes characterized by an almost bizarre, purely utilitarian programming logic, which brought together artists who would otherwise never have met within the strictly ethnically or regionally segregated network of member associations. In this way, the Fine Arts Association fulfilled its mission to showcase art from across Czechoslovakia, irrespective of ethnic origins.

At the turn of October and November 1925, the Fine Arts Association’s exhibition at the Rudolfinum featured works by Anna Roškotová, Egon Adler, and the recently married painters Charlotte Radnitz-Schrötter and Richard Schrötter. Despite their differences, the collection had one common element: the works were largely produced during stays in France and Italy. Anna Roškotová presented watercolours from a trip to northern Italy. Egon Adler exhibited watercolours from a stay in the south of France. The Schrötters presented their most recent paintings, which were primarily created in Paris and Venice between 1924 and 1925.

From a research perspective, the exhibition is significant both typologically, as an example of standard contemporary exhibition practice, and because it brought together three notable figures – German-speaking members of the emerging generation of artists, all of whom are believed to be of Jewish heritage. We still have only limited information about them, and they are associated with a small number of surviving works, which nonetheless continue to attract attention. The exhibition caught the artists at the height of their creative powers, with their careers on the rise – shortly after their first works were acquired by the Modern Gallery. The highly gifted Egon Adler, a native of Karlovy Vary, subsequently made his way to the United States. The Schrötters were among the leading artistic forces of the Prager Secession towards the end of the 1920s. Following her divorce from Richard, Charlotte moved to Italy in the early 1930s, remarried and worked under the name Charlotte Frumi. Richard Schrötter disappeared in Australia in the spring of 1939 under obscure circumstances. Of the four exhibiting artists, only Anna Roškotová — a generation older than the others — continued her career in Czechoslovakia. She worked primarily in the genre of vedute and was perhaps the least remarkable and most conservative of the group. During the interwar period, she exhibited with the Circle of Women Artists (Kruh výtvarných umělkyň), but her star gradually faded and today she is one of the many women artists of the First Republic who have been largely forgotten.

This was the first exhibition to be held in the Rudolfinum's exhibition halls following several months of renovation. The interior had been modified to allow installations along the full length of the continuous walls, which were divided by partitions. The exhibition was covered in both the Czech and German media. Oskar Schürer, the author of the most detailed Czech-language review, noted in the daily Tribuna that the newly installed, removable partitions "give the space a sense of calm and unity, creating genuinely favourable exhibition rooms.“ [Schürer 1925] Reviewers invariably compared the respective output of the Schrötters, and their verdicts ranged from observations about a felicitous complementarity to outright censure of Richard Schrötter's work. The critic Adolf Veselý of the newspaper České slovo wrote exclusively about the watercolours by Adler and Roškotová, making no mention whatsoever of the Schrötters' work. He did, however, indulge in the customary comparison of ethnically Czech and German artistic production, inadvertently touching upon Adler's internationalist exceptionality: "In Roškotová one senses a certain domestic, wholesome, energetic noisiness; Adler is cultivatedly discreet, fastidious, refined, even morbid… Anna Roškotová remains solidly and earthily Czech in this respect – but what is German about Egon Adler?“ [Veselý 1925]

This was a sales exhibition, a common practice at the time. Charlotte Radnitz-Schrötter was represented by eighteen oil paintings, including Harbour in Venice (1924) from the collection of the Modern Gallery. Richard Schrötter exhibited sixteen oil paintings, among which was Landscape with Bathing Girls, today in the permanent collection of the National Gallery. This painting appeared at the Venice Biennale in 1926. Schrötter also exhibited Pastorale (Cortina), now in the collection of the Museum of Czech Literature. This work was subsequently included in the Czechoslovak section of the international exhibition in Dresden in 1926. The exhibition also featured eight of his non-commercial portraits depicting family members and close acquaintances. The most expensive of Schrötter's works included the now-lost Judgement of Paris – reproduced in the Prager Presse – and an as yet unidentified work entitled Friends, offered at the considerable sums of 12,000 and 10,000 crowns respectively. The reviewers noted that these paintings, like the Landscape with Bathing Girls, were characterized by Arcadian motifs, which Schrötter had explored during his Italian sojourn between 1924 and 1925. During this period, he was clearly influenced by the nascent Neue Sachlichkeit – Carlo Mense in particular – placing him alongside Jan Zrzavý, who was also working in Italy at that time.

This was, in sum, an ordinary exhibition that captured in a happy constellation of artists who left, through the works on display, an interesting trace in the history of art in the Bohemian Lands – only to disappear, for various reasons, from the Czechoslovak art scene.

Ivo Habán

Works Cited

Schürer 1925: Dr. Oskar Schürer, Pražské umělecké výstavy. Adler, Roškotová, Schrötterovi, Tribuna VII, 1925, no. 260, 8. 11., p. 3

Veselý 1925: Ad. [Adolf] Veselý, Akvarely domácí i cizí (Výstava Anny Roškotové a Egona Adlera v Krasoumné jednotě v Praze), České slovo XVII, 1925, no. 254, 3. 11., p. 6

Further Reading

Ivo Habán, Československo: nové realismy v éře avantgard, in: Ivo Habán (ed.), Nové realismy. Moderní realistické přístupy na československé výtvarné scéně 1918–1945, Liberec 2019, pp. 18–117, here p. 49, 53

Ivo Habán, „Že bylo počítáno také s účastí našich německých krajanů, je samozřejmé.“ Německy hovořící umělci v meziválečném Československu mezi Prahou a Drážďany, in: Karel Srp (ed.), V novém světě. Podmínky modernity 1917–1927, Ostrava – Řevnice 2018, pp. 76–86

Ivo Habán, Prager Secession. Německý sen v multikulturní Praze, in: Anna Habánová (ed.), Mladí lvi v kleci. Umělecké skupiny němec ky hovořících výtvarníků z Čech, Moravy a Slezska v meziválečném období, Liberec – Řevnice 2013, pp. 118–151

Anna Janištinová, Praha a Čechy, in: Hana Rousová (ed.), Mezery v historii, Polemický duch Střední Evropy – Němci, Židé, Češi (exh. cat.), Praha 1994, pp. 44–53

Archival Sources

Archive of the National Gallery in Prague, fonds Moderní galerie, nákupy děl; fonds Krasoumná jednota, výstřižková služba [Modern Gallery, acquisitions; Fine Arts Association, newspaper clippings]

Anonymous author, Der Kunstverein für Böhmen, Deutsche Zeitung Bohemia XCVIII, 1925, no. 245, 21. 10., p. 5

Dr. F. X. Harlas, Umění, Národní politika XLIII, 1925, no. 298, 31. 10., pp. 8–9

V. Nikodem, Pražské výstavy v listopadu, Národní osvobození II, 1925, no. 313, 15. 11., p. 4