Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

The Brno Devětsil, the “comradely association” of the older Prague Devětsil, originally included mostly writers – poets and critics of film, art and literature – rather than artists and architects. Between 1924 and 1926 it was headed by the literature historian Bedřich Václavek. In the first months of its activity beginning in December 1923, the Brno Devětsil was not able to organize exhibitions because its members were not producing works of art or architecture. For this reason, it focused on other activities such as the numerous lectures on contemporary politics and culture, eccentric carnivals and “five-o-clocks,” and in particular, editing and publishing avantgarde periodicals. The internationally-oriented magazine Pásmo (1924–1926), published in Brno from March 1924 onward, served both the Brno and Prague Devětsil, just like the revue Fronta (1927), the publication of which marked the end of the Brno Devětsil’s activities.

Yet, the Brno Devětsil’s first major event was an exhibition, namely the Exhibition of New Art held in January 1924. It was planned by the leader of the Prague avant-garde, Karel Teige, and the poet and journalist Arthur Černík, who was a member of both Prague and Brno groups and was living in Brno-Juliánov when the Brno Devětsil was founded. Teige and Černík decided that they would reprise the exhibition Bazaar of Modern Art, which ended in Prague on December 2, 1923, adapting it to the humbler conditions of the exhibition “salon” on the first floor of the Barvič bookshop in Česká Street. Although the Brno Devětsil members acknowledge in their recollections that there was a close connection between the Prague premiere and the Brno reprise [Halas 1928; Václavek 1962] and although even today, the art historian Petr Ingerle interprets the Brno exhibition as a symbolic “translatio,” a transfer of avant-garde Devětsil ideas from Prague to Brno [Ingerle - Česálková 2014, p. 26], Teige’s correspondence with Černík emphasized the Brno show’s autonomy: “We plan to assemble new collections, different than those in Prague, making it the new, third Devětsil exhibition” – after the Spring Exhibition in 1922 and the Bazaar of Modern Art – “organized by the Brno Devětsil.” [Ingerle – Česálková 2014, p. 27]

The Brno exhibition had a new element – a large painted slogan by the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg “New art will cease to be art,” and Teige recommended adding more painted signs expressing Devětsil’s poetist-constructivist agenda. Among the newly included exhibiting artists was Lyubov Kozintsova, Ehrenburg’s wife and the representative of the Soviet avantgarde at the exhibition. Judging from the catalogues of both the Brno and Prague shows, other changes consisted in mere whittling down the Bazaar of Modern Art. The mannequin head and the mirror that “portrayed” the viewer were missing among the ready mades, architectural designs by Krejcar, Chochol and Feuerstein were also absent, as was the photograph by Man Ray, the avantgarde photographer from France. The only pictorial poem was Teige’s and Nezval’s Co je nejkrásnějšího v kavárně (What is the Most Beautiful Thing in a Café), although it may have been a second as Eugen Dostál's critical review of the exhibition describes Štyrský's poem White Star Line (that is, unless Dostál had already seen it at the Prague Bazaar and his article for Lidové noviny mentions it only as a typical example of Devětsil production). Similarly, J. B. Svrček’s review of the Brno exhibition in the daily Rovnost mentions the painter Remo who is, however, absent from the catalogue. While Prague’s Bazaar in November 1923 featured 177 works by 14 artists, the Brno Exhibition of New Art was much smaller with 23 works by 10 artists. [Ingerle – Česálková 2014, p. 27]

The Brno communist daily Rovnost, to which Artur Černík had been contributing since 1921, was responsible for the promotion of the show; it aimed to create an educational section of sorts, which would introduce Brno workers to the latest in contemporary culture. Černík also made the opening speech. The most interesting reviews [Maňasová Hradská 2012] were authored by Eugen Dostál, the founder of the art history department at the newly established Masaryk University (in Lidové noviny on Jan. 31. 1924) and Jaroslav B. Svrček, a prominent art critic and member of the Brno Devětsil (in Rovnost on Jan. 20, 1924).

The format of both of these reviews is somewhat unusual, as their authors discuss the more general issues of avantgarde art. Because Dostál did not sympathize with the avantgarde, his texts have a critical tone resembling the reviews of Devětsil exhibitions by Josef Čapek and Václav Nebeský. Both Dostál and Svrček, however, touch upon a problem that the reviewers of Devětsil’s Prague shows had left aside: avantgarde art was largely inaccessible to broader public, including the working class. In Dostál’s view, Devětsil artists built their art on “overtheorized” speculation and did not even manage to fulfill these theoretical postulates. Their art did not cease to be art, it just came across as an unoriginal rehash of Cubism and Picasso. “Of all the works of art created so far, these paintings are the least accessible to the general public, both intellectually and emotionally,” writes Dostál in his review for Lidové noviny. Svrček, otherwise avantgarde’s staunch advocate, describes the Brno show visitors who “stand helpless, as if watching a picture-puzzle mystery.” He therefore wrote his text as a guide for viewers to better understand the artworks at the exhibition. He explained to the readers of the communist Rovnost that modern art no longer consisted of realistic imitation of things around us. Svrček did acknowledge that some of the paintings still adhered to realism, such as the canvases by Mrkvička and Teige, and that precisely these paintings were more comprehensible to the audience than the works by Toyen and Jindřich Štyrský, who concerned themselves with nothing else but “pure lyricism of form.” The members of the Brno Devětsil were aware of this problem. On January 22, 1924, when the Exhibition of New Art was still open, Artuš Černík held a lecture in the assembly hall of the Vesna club building, entitled Jest moderní civilizační kultura kulturou proletářskou? (Is the Modern Civilization Culture a Proletarian Culture?)  [anonymous author 1924]. On the same day, a part of the lecture was published in Rovnost [Černík 1924]. 

In November 1924, the Brno Devětsil organized an exhibition of international avantgarde prints in the window of Stanislav Kočí's bookshop on U radnice Street [Ingerle - Česálková 2014, p. 41]. In April 1924, the painter Josef Šíma, who was already living in Paris at the time, joined the Brno Devětsil, and a year later he too had an exhibition in Brno, again in Barvič's bookshop on Česká Street [Ingerle - Česálková 2014, pp. 36-39]. František Halas and Bedřich Václavek both recall that the first Brno Devětsil show emphasized its initiatory and provocative character. “In Barvič's salon people get into their selves….“Lycée girls giggle and professors blush at this profanation of Art and Beauty. Good thing it ended without a deficit” [Halas 1928].

Rostislav Švácha

Works Cited

anonymous author 1924: anonymous author, Denní zprávy, Rovnost XL, 1924, no. 20, 20. 1., p. 4

Černík 1924: Artuš Černík, Spojitost kultury s dobovou stěžejní myšlenkou, Rovnost XL, 1924, no. 22, 22. 1., p. 3

Halas 1928: František Halas, Devětsil v Brně, Literární noviny II, 1928, no. 23, 15. 3., pp. 1–2

Ingerle – Česálková 2014: Petr Ingerle – Lucie Česálková, Brněnský Devětsil a multimediální přesahy umělecké avantgardy, Brno 2014

Maňasová Hradská 2012: Helena Maňasová Hradská, Avantgarda ve výkladní skříni: Výstava nového umění (1924) v Brně pohledem dobového tisku, Brno v minulosti a dnes 25, Brno 2012, pp. 337–376 

Václavek 1962: Bedřich Václavek, Literární studie a podobizny, Praha 1962, p. 262

Further Reading

 Jaroslav Bílek – Oleg Sus, O vzniku Brněnského Devětsilu (Z dějin avantgardní umělecké organizace), Sborník prací filozofické fakulty brněnské univerzity D 13, 1966, pp. 117–124

Anonymous author, Denní zprávy (…), Salon umění, Brno, Česká 13, Rovnost XL, 1924, no. 12, 12. 1., p. 3

Petr Ingerle, Brno a literární a umělecká avantgarda dvacátých let 20. století, in: Alena Pomajzlová (ed.), Devětsil 1920–1931, Praha 2019, pp. 63–86

Rea Michalová, Brněnský Devětsil: Časopisy Host a Pásmo, in: eadem, Karel Teige: Kapitán avantgardy, Praha 2016, pp. 131–132

Oleg Sus, Z dokumentů Brněnského Devětsilu, Česká literatura XIII, 1965, no. 1, p. 85

Archival Sources

Cituje Jiří Hek, Z dokumentů a korespondence Brněnského Devětsilu 1923–1927, Literární archiv: Sborník Památníku národního písemnictví 2, Praha 1967, pp. 176–201, and Petr Ingerle – Lucie Česálková, Brněnský Devětsil a multimediální přesahy umělecké avantgardy, Brno 2014, p. 128