Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

Veraikon, a publishing house and eponymous journal initially focusing on graphic art, was founded in 1912 by painter and journalist Emil Pacovský and his friends Jan Konůpek and Antonín Dolenský from the Sursum association. The journal published studies on graphic art from the past and present, as well as exhibition reviews. As early as 1913, the editorial board organized its first exhibition: a survey of European graphic art from the previous thirty years, held at the Municipal House. After World War I and the establishment of Czechoslovakia, the journal underwent a fundamental transformation. Its subtitle was expanded to read "Art Journal: Graphic Edition," and it began to devote attention to other artistic media, not just printmaking. A turning point for Veraikon came in 1920 when Konůpek and Dolenský left the editorial board. Emil Pacovský then ran the journal alone until 1937. Apparently, the three editors parted on good terms (Konůpek continued to contribute to the journal in subsequent years), and in March and April of 1920 they jointly organized a second exhibition initiated by the Veraikon editorial board that reflected the journal's changed interests. The authors gave it the subtitle Modern Art, and although graphic works comprised nearly a quarter of all exhibited pieces, it also featured paintings, sculptures, and architectural designs.

In the first issue of the Veraikon that year, the editorial board invited all artists within the journal's orbit to take part in the planned exhibition. The twenty participating artists were indeed drawn primarily from the editors' circle of friends: alongside Jan Konůpek himself, these included artists who had contributed both texts and graphic works to the Veraikon, such as Josef Čapek, Pravoslav Kotík, and Jan Zrzavý. Just as the journal, which Pacovský conceived as a platform reflecting Czech and Slovak culture in its entirety and which also attended to artistic activity in the regions, the exhibition too was intended to offer "an overall picture of today's modern Czechoslovak art." [Pacovský 1920, p. 18] In a peculiar synergy, the current work of several members of the Tvrdošíjní (The Obstinate) group converged here with the more conservative output of regional artists such as the South Bohemian artist Alois Moravec and Ferdiš Duša, a member of the Moravian Koliba group – works that Josef Čapek, in his review of the exhibition, described as "visually inarticulate." [Čapek 1920]

The exhibition's central figure, Jiří Kroha, showcased nearly forty temperas, watercolours, pastels, and prints, thirteen architectural designs, and a plaster piece entitled Sketch for Eve. His early architectural designs and independent works were characterized by movement and dynamism – motifs evident, for example, in one of the exhibited pieces, the tempera Flies in the Air, which is now held in the Brno City Museum. This style prompted Pacovský to compare Kroha to the Italian Futurists. [Pacovský 1920, p. 19] Further architectural designs came from Bohuslav Fuchs and Eduard Hnilička, Emil Pacovský's brother-in-law. The exhibition also included artistic editions and publications by the Veraikon publishing house, intended to represent its achievements over the previous eight years. These were complemented by woodcuts and other prints that had previously appeared in the journal, including works by Bohumil Kubišta and Jan Honsa (erroneously listed in the catalogue as Housa).

Many reviews and brief notices in the contemporary press remarked that the exhibition presented the latest developments in domestic art across its various registers and media – painting, printmaking, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. While reviewers praised the work of The Obstinate (the critic Václav Rada even described the exhibition as an excellent supplement to The Obstinate show that was held just two months earlier at Weinert's Hall), numerous other participating artists, such as Antonín Porkert and František Pořický, were sharply condemned as dilettantes. Pacovský himself described some of the works as incomprehensible and artistically unsound [Pacovský 1920, p. 20], specifically those of Pořický, a Plzeň-based printmaker, painter and secondary school teacher, and Václav Patzak. Both artists had apparently been included through Jan Konůpek, whom they knew from the Artist Group (Umělecká skupina) in Pilsen. The organizers were likely aware of the exhibition's inherent contradictions and compromised the conceptual design and selection of works to accommodate friends. The exhibition's qualitative unevenness was neatly encapsulated in Vladislav Vančura's review: "in its better half its level is more than good; the other half of the exhibited works is neither modern, nor beautiful in any other sense." [Vančura 1920]

Despite the merciless criticism levelled at a portion of the exhibited works, the Veraikon exhibition was a success in terms of attendance – more than a thousand visitors had reportedly seen it within the first four days. [Anonymous author 1920] The journal Veraikon presented the breadth of its interests but failed to secure positive attention for the provincial artists and friends of the editorial board who, in Ferdiš Duša's words, yearned to bring their work "in the Prague arena" and had looked to Emil Pacovský and his journal to help them do so [LA PNP]. Among Prague exhibitions of the early 1920s, the Veraikon Modern Art exhibition – notable above all for having been organized neither by an artists' association nor by a private gallery, but by a journal's editorial board – remains a rather modest survey that, despite its title, presented alongside progressive modern work the more conservative output of artists who today stand on the margins of scholarly interest in the history of Czechoslovak inter-war art.

Tereza Štěpánová

Works Cited

Pacovský 1920: Emil Pacovský, Výstava Veraikonu, moderní umění, Veraikon VI, 1920, příloha Rozhled, únor-duben, pp. 18–20

Čapek 1920: J. Č. [Josef Čapek], Výstava Veraikon, Národní listy LX, 1920, no. 85, 26. 3., p. 4

Vančura 1920: A. Vančura [Vladislav Vančura], Výstava Veraikonu, České slovo XII, 1920, no. 80, 3. 4., p. 2

Anonymous author 1920: Anonymous author, Výstava skupiny Veraikon pořádaná v Krasoumné jednotě, Venkov XV, 1920, no. 74, 27. 3., p. 6

LA PNP: LA PNP, fond Emil Pacovský, korespondence vlastní – přijatá: Duša Ferdiš, dopis Emilu Pacovskému, 1920

Further Reading

Šárka Hribová, Výtvarník Emil Pacovský jako organizátor a vydavatel, rigorózní práce, PedF UK, Praha 2010

Pavel Šopák (ed.), Koliba: programy – texty – korespondence, Opava 2005, p. 117

Archival Sources

LA PNP (Literary Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature), fonds Emil Pacovský, korespondence vlastní – přijatá: Duša Ferdiš; Porkert Antonín [Emil Pacovský, Personal Correspondence – Incoming: Duša Ferdiš; Porkert Antonín]

Anonymous author, Výstava skupiny Veraikon v Krasoumné jednotě, Právo lidu XXIX, 1920, no. 70, 23. 3., p. 8

Anonymous author, Výstava skupiny Veraikon, Právo lidu XXIX, 1920, no. 91, 17. 4., p. 8

Anonymous author, Výstava skupiny Veraikon pořádaná v Krasoumné jednotě, Venkov XV, 1920, no. 74, 27. 3., p. 6

Anonymous author, Výstava skupiny Veraikon pořádaná v Krasoumné jednotě, České slovo XII, 1920, no. 76, 30. 3., p. 5

Anonymous author, Výstava skupiny Veraikon v Krasoumné jednotě, Tribuna II, 1920, no. 72, 24. 3., p. 6; no. 74, 26. 3., p. 6; no. 80, 2. 4., p. 5; no. 81, 3. 4., p. 5

Redakce Veraikonu, Redakce Veraikonu uspořádá jarní výstavu výtvarného umění, Veraikon VI, 1920, no. 1, p. 16