Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

The Art of Republican Spain was the first international exhibition to open in Prague after the interruption of the Second World War. It was organized by the Mánes Fine Arts Association under the auspices of the Czechoslovak government as the 361st Mánes exhibition. In the short period before the events of 1948, the Czech cultural community worked to restore its interwar contacts and cultural prosperity, and the show was a prominent result of these efforts. It was not by chance that the organizers turned their attention to Paris, but they focused on artists of Spanish origin who had lived in France for a long time or had come there to escape the Spanish Civil War.

In Prague, the exhibition was seen as an opportunity to build on the admiration for the Paris School and the prewar cultural cooperation with France. It was also a manifestation of support for democratic Spain, in line with the official political and cultural position of the time. The Czechoslovak audiences welcomed the Spanish artists as part of the broader international struggle to overcome Franco’s dictatorship. This international context probably contributed to the diplomatic nature of the exhibition. The show was preceded by several brief press notes and a few articles in which Czech expatriates living in Paris, such as Miroslav Míčko and Otta Mizera, introduced the Spanish artists. Míčko even took readers on a tour of the artists’ studios, vividly describing their appearance, character, and creative habitats. He also mentioned the informal negotiations behind the scenes: “The Parisian Spaniards were sincerely and courageously looking forward to our exhibition. At the first mention of Prague, they postponed their planned show in Switzerland, but for several months, there were only vague personal greetings and messages, which they celebrated by having drinks with occasional messengers from Czechoslovakia in their little café ‘Aux 4 sergants.’ The official invitation still didn’t arrive. But then everything happened all at once. Sometime around Christmas, the sculptor Condoy happily showed me a telegram from our Ministry of Information, and on New Year’s Eve, the lively Adolf Hoffmeister arrived with painters Gross and Fišárek to discuss what was needed.” [Míčko 1946] The works were collected in the house of Antoni Condoy, who became a secretary of sorts for the Paris base. The Mánes exhibition committee consisted of Alois Fišárek, Josef Grus, Lev Nerad, Josef Wagner, and Vojtěch Tittelbach. The list of exhibited works included more than 240 pieces (there were even more artworks at the Brno iteration of the show), mostly from the war period. They were generally smaller-format works that responded to current events such as the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, as well as the latest developments in French modern art. The few surviving photographs of the installation at Mánes show paintings hung in two rows, one above the other, and a large number of small sculptures on high pedestals.

Pablo Picasso, the crowned king of the Spanish community in France, was several decades older than other participating artists and a world-famous artist at the time. His works were undoubtedly the main attraction of both the Prague and Brno exhibitions, although Czech critics found them somewhat disappointing. Jindřich Chalupecký commented on the declining quality of Picasso's work: “Yes, Picasso has aged. Others, younger, surpass him in the power and brilliance of their works; his paintings, once dazzling and provocative, attracting all admiration and all hostility, proclaiming the most unheard-of truths and attacking the most unshakable certainties, today, impoverished in colour and careless in composition, hardly hold the viewer’s eye and Czech critics can without shame express the generally shared opinion about them: they lack quality.” [Chalupecký 1946] Nevertheless, the exhibition was popular and some of the artists, such as Oscar Domínguez, would return to Czechoslovakia in the following years.

In addition to Picasso, the exhibition featured 17 living artists, alongside the sculptor Julio Gonzalez, who died during the war, and his daughter, the painter Roberta Gonzalez, the only woman represented in the exhibition. The surrealists Salvator Dalí and Joan Miró were the only “French Spaniards” missing, as they no longer lived in France after the war. Although this was primarily an art exhibition, it had a significant diplomatic aspect to it (the honorary committee included the Prague Mayor Petr Zenkl, Vítězslav Nezval, František Halas, Ivan Olbracht, Vincenc Kramář, Jan Mukařovský, Jaroslav Fragner, and Emil Filla); the preparatory committee consisted of persons with close ties to France (Alois Fišárek, František Gross, Adolf Hoffmeister, Arnošt Paderlík, Zdeněk Přibyl, Josef Šíma). President Edvard Beneš visited the exhibition, adding to its political significance, and there was also an accompanying cultural program. The exhibition coincided with several demonstrations in support of democratic Spain, showing an unprecedented synergy of cultural and political fronts at the time. In addition, the newly formed Blok výtvarných umělců země Moravskoslezské (Fine Arts Bloc of the Moravian-Silesian Region) took over the show and reprised it in a slightly modified constellation of works at the House of Arts in Brno from March 23 to April 14, 1946. There it was hailed as one of the "greatest events in the artistic life of Brno in recent decades” [J. G. 1946].

Both the Prague and Brno exhibitions were accompanied by an A5 black-and-white catalogue with a text by Jean Cassou, a French art critic of Spanish origin, and poems by Paul Eluard and Tristan Tzara. The catalogue published by Mánes also includes an introductory article by the French surrealist painter Frédéric Delanglade, whose texts repeatedly appeared in Czech periodicals. The Prague and Brno catalogues were similar in format and content, with the main difference being the cover, as the Brno version was more modest in terms of text and reproductions (it was designed by Antonín Jero, who also created the invitation). 

The main symbolic message of the exhibition, as can be gleaned from numerous reviews and catalogue texts, was a reconnection with the tradition of modern art disrupted by wartime violence but also solidarity and sharing of wartime suffering and postwar hope. This is reflected in Tzara’s poem “Spain,” printed in the catalogue. It begins with an emphatic prologue: “Guernica, Lidice, Oradour: with three strokes of the same dagger, innocence has been murdered three times. But nothing will prevent the high flame of human conscience from regaining its strength on the path of freedom. On the ashes of shame there already shines a joyful glow, rich with future and hope.  On the brotherhood of our suffering, we shall build the indestructible city of our present.” [Tzara 1946] 

The exhibition of Spanish artists settled in Paris left an indelible mark in the history of modern Czech art and inspired the collecting and exhibiting activities of many institutions. In the 1960s, 1980s, and 1990, a series of exhibitions reflected on the 1946 show as a testimony to the postwar struggle for modern expression and extraordinary international cooperation. 

Pavlína Morganová

Works Cited

Chalupecký 1946: Jindřich Chalupecký, Výstavy cizího umění, Listy I, 1946, no. 2, p. 318

J. G. 1946: J. G., Zahájení výstavy umělců republikánského Španělska, Čin II, 1946, no. 72, p. 3

Míčko 1946: Miroslav Míčko, Dopis o pařížských Španělech, Kytice I, 1946, no. 4, p. 186

Tzara 1946: Umění republikánského Španělska. Španělští umělci Pařížské školy, exh. cat., S. V. U. Mánes, Praha 1946

Further Reading

Artistas Españoles de Paris. Praga 1946 (exh. cat.), Caja de Madrid, Sala Exposiciones Casa del Monte v Madridu 1993–1994

Marie Hovorková, Španělští umělci Pařížské školy (exh. cat.), Národní galerie v Praze 1965

Jiří Hlušička – Marie Dohnalová, Španělští umělci Pařížské školy (exh. cat.), Moravská galerie v Brně 1985

Vilém Jůza, Španělští umělci Pařížské školy ze sbírky Galerie výtvarného umění v Ostravě (exh. cat.), Dům umění v Ostravě 1992

Pavel Štěpánek, Španělští umělci Pařížské školy v Praze a Brně 1946, 52. Bulletin Moravské galerie v Brně, Brno 1996, pp. 224–226

Archival Sources

Archive of the National Gallery in Prague (SCHWP, f. varia, books of clippings SVU Mánes, VF 28/02) 

Archiv Domu uměn v Brně [Archive of the House of Art in Brno]

Anonymous author, Španělští umělci zahanbují české umělce-kolaboranty. Ministr dr. Z. Nejedlý v rozhlasovém projevu, Mladá fronta II, no. 36, p. 2.

Anonymous author, Zpráva k výstavě Španělů, Mladá fronta II, no. 15, p. 3.

Frédéric Delanlage, Picassovy politické obrazy, Tvorba XV, no. 7, pp. 104–105.

František Doležal, Španělský dar svobodě, Lidová kultura II, no. 7, p. 3

jm, Výstava umělců republikánského Španělska, Mladá fronta II, no. 24, p. 1.

ma, Otevření výstavy španělského umění, Svobodné noviny II, 1946, no. 25, p. 3.

Zdeněk Přibyl, Španělští výtvarníci v Praze, Mladá fronta II, no. 20, p. 1.

Š. J., Beseda se španělskými umělci, Lidová demokracie II, no. 30, p. 4. 

Vladimír Šolta, Štětcem a barvou za svobodu. Umění republikánského Španělska v Mánesu, Mladá fronta II, no. 27, p. 3.

ž, Projevy solidarity s demokratickým Španělskem, Lidová kultura II, no. 5, p. 5.