Date:8 November 1934 – 30 November 1934
Place: Prague, Elán Exhibition Hall
Exhibition design:Josef Hesoun
Organizer:Leopold Mazáč Publishing House
Conception:Ján Smrek
On November 8, 1934, the exhibition of paintings by Martin Benka was opened as the first show of the Elán Exhibition Hall at 53 Spálená Street in Prague. This new space also housed the Slovak Bookshop and belonged to the Leopold Mazáč Publishing House, which had been publishing Slovak literature, especially by young Slovak authors, since 1925.
From the beginning of his publishing career, Leopold Mazáč collaborated with Ján Smrek (born Ján Čietek), a Slovak poet and journalist with considerable organizational talent and an extensive network of contacts in the Czech and Slovak cultural scenes. In 1930, after he moved to Prague, Smrek also began publishing the art magazine Elán, with Mazáč’s support. The magazine “survived” in Mazáč's publishing house until August 1939 and gained recognition as the most important Slovak cultural magazine during the Czechoslovak First Republic.
As the publishing house prospered, Mazáč decided to open a showroom and establish his own bookshop. In 1933, he rented the ground floor and three floors of a building in the center of Prague at 53 Spálená Street and commissioned the architect Josef Hesoun to redesign the space. The premises of the publishing house included not only the Slovak Bookshop but also the editorial office of Elán magazine and a lecture hall connected to the gallery of the Elán Exhibition Hall.
The choice of the first exhibiting artist, Martin Benka, was hardly accidental. He was a good friend of Ján Smrek, who oversaw the whole enterprise, but also a long-time collaborator of the publishing house and a Slovak painter living in Prague, whom the critics considered the founder of Slovak modernist painting [Kapráliková 2021, p. 171]. A. V. Hrska wrote the following about Benka’s programmatically Slovak landscapes: “These paintings are magical in colour. [...] the tones through which the soul of the land and the people speaks to us. It is like Slovak folk art but refined and seen again by the painter in nature.” [Hrska 1934, p. 7]
The opening was attended by a number of state officials, writers, and artists, including Minister Milan Hodža and Josef Rotnágl, Mayor of the City of Prague and Chairman of Československá jednota (Czechoslovak Union). In his speech, Hodža emphasized the importance of Slovak “cultural nationalism,” which in his view brought positive values and allowed Slovakia to integrate Czech rationalism with Slavic Eastern psychism not only in art but also geographically and politically [Hodža 1934, p. 1]. Rotnágl, on the other hand, stressed the need for a Slovak exhibition pavilion in Prague and Czechoslovak cooperation [Smrek 1934, p. 4].
The Elán Exhibition Hall became the showcase of Slovak art in Prague. The exhibitions usually lasted one month and were free of charge. In the off-season (September-May) Mazáč rented the exhibition hall to Czech artists. The program of the lecture hall followed the program of the gallery. The programming depended on the current financial situation of the publishing house and Smrek’s contacts. The exhibiting artists were mostly Slovaks trained or settled in Prague, or in some way connected with Smrek or the publishing house. These were mainly artists who designed book covers for Mazáč’s publishing house (Edícia mladých slovenských autorov [Young Slovak Authors Series - EMSA), such as Mikuláš Galanda, Miloš A. Bazovský, Cyprián Majerník, Štefan Bednár, Vincent Hložník, and František Reichentál. Cyprián Majerník’s exhibition at the Elán Exhibition Hall in 1935 is generally regarded as a milestone in the emergence of the so-called Generation of 1909 - artists who studied in Prague and remained closely connected with the Prague artistic milieu. Other artists of this generation – the core of the so-called Czech branch of the 1909 Generation – also made their debut in the Elán: Štefan Bednár (October 16 - November 15, 1936), Ján Mudroch (September 22 - October 10, 1937), Ján Želibský (April 15 - May 7, 1937), and Bedřich Hoffstädter (January 25 - February 15, 1939). The gallery also represented Czech authors with ties to Slovakia, such as Jaroslav Jareš, or those who focused on Slovakia in their work, such as Marie Vořechová-Vejvodová.
Alexander Vladimír Hrska, a Czech painter and printmaker, wrote exhibition reviews for Elán; in 1934, he became the main book cover designer for the EMSA series, replacing Martin Benka, who had held the position since 1927.
The Elán Exhibition Hall provided a space for the presentation of Slovak art in the capital of the Czechoslovak Republic At the time of its opening, Smrek had already created a functional infrastructure for the promotion and presentation of Slovak art around the Mazáč publishing house. Artists could earn money by designing book covers, which were immediately advertised in the magazine Elán. At the same time, the gallery provided a platform for a lively exchange of ideas among artists, whether associated with the publishing house or not. Every exhibition of a Slovak artist was reviewed in Elán. The Slovak art world followed these activities closely, but they went largely unnoticed in Czech modern art circles – they seemed to be of more interest to representatives of the state and its institutions, and to Czech figures involved in the Slovak cultural scene, some of whom sought to proclaim Czechoslovak reciprocity, while others pointed to the legitimacy of Slovak art and culture within the Czechoslovak Republic.
Lucia Kvočáková
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