Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

Zdenka Burghauserová (1894-1960) was a Czech painter, graphic artist, and theatre designer. She was one of four daughters of Gustav Burghauser and his wife, Miloslava Burghauserová, who shared a common interest in the arts, especially music. Zdenka and her younger sister, Jarmila, were artistically talented and both studied at the School of Applied Arts in Prague. They exhibited together for the first time in their hometown of Chrudim. After graduating, Zdenka taught drawing at girls’ schools, first in Pilsen and later in Prague. There she worked at the Secondary School for Girls until her retirement. In Pilsen, she got her first teaching job at the end of the war as a substitute for Augustin Němejc, and after his return, she became a teacher at the girls’ grammar school in Prague, where she worked until 1938. 

In her work as an artist, she focused primarily on figurative compositions and portraits. Her expressive, symbolist paintings show her interest in penetrating the human soul. She was probably influenced by Edvard Munch in her efforts to authentically express the emotions that lie within. Her early work is characterized by introspective analysis and contemplation of her life. After the death of her sister Jarmila in 1920, motifs of mortality began to appear in her work, reappearing intermittently until her later years. For a brief period, her work reflected a new source of happiness after the birth of her son, Jarmil, in 1921. With her new role as a mother, the content of her work changed, and she concentrated mainly on themes related to the female body and motherhood, creating several portraits of her son. In these works, she used a more colourful palette, expressing the love and tenderness of motherhood and giving free rein to the fairy tales and exotic fantasies that had fascinated her since childhood. Burghauserová’s other sister, Ludmila, died in 1936, and soon after, the painter decided to give up teaching and devote herself entirely to art. In 1946, her mother died, and these unexpected blows of fate finally freed Burghauserová’s artistic expression from all conventionality [Mašek 1948].

By 1927, Burghauserová had already had two exhibitions – the first in her hometown of Chrudim in 1916, where she exhibited with her sister Jarmila, and the second in the Beníšková Salon in Pilsen in 1918. The 1927 exhibition was organized by Krasoumná jednota (Fine Arts Association) and focused on her work from the period between 1919 and 1927. The year 1919 marks the end of Burghauserová’s early work and is also an imaginary turning point. At that time, she moved to Prague permanently, taking a new step on her way to becoming an independent artist. In 1920, she co-founded the Circle of Women Artists, with whom she participated in the first members’ exhibition in 1921.

The 1927 exhibition opened in May at the House of Artists and presented 31 works. According to Slovník československých výtvarných umělců (Dictionary of Czechoslovak Artists), Burghauserová had created 32 large oil paintings and many pastels by 1927. The exhibition largely consisted of oil paintings but also included three pastel drawings: Shame, Pain, and Music. Some paintings came from private owners, of whom only three were named in the catalogue: the Syndicate of Czechoslovak Artists, which lent the oil painting Spring and Silence in the Mountains (1920); Hilda Pirchanová who lent Orchid (1926); and Dr. Jan Grmela who lent Blues (1926). 

Burghauserová greatly admired modern literature, especially French poetry, and let it inspire her work. For example, her painting Sentimental Conversation is a reaction to the poems of Paul Verlaine, and the figure of Madman comes from the play Dawn by the Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren [Veselý 1927]. The painting The Curtain of Night (1927) was inspired by the work of Jaroslav Seifert. Her exotic fantasies and fascination with the Orient were represented in the exhibition by the Opium Veil (1927) [Atsebešová 1927].

The opinions of art critics on the work of Zdenka Burghauserová varied. For example, Josef Čapek, in his article for Lidové noviny, appreciated her courage and willingness to experiment but found technical flaws in her artistic expression: “The drawing is not solid enough, it oscillates between stylization, naturalism, and the smooth neoclassical emptiness.” [Čapek 1927] He also criticized her use of color, which he considered overblown, with excessively sharp hues. Čapek called Burghauserová an outsider among Czech women artists. In his view, her paintings “disintegrate into displays of passionate courage and will, and at the same time into painfully forced expressions of strength, paralyzed by an overwrought but insufficiently focused and purposeful striving.” We can speculate whether Čapek meant the word “outsider” in a purely negative sense. Burghauserová’s work was often seen as outside the general ideas of modernism, and her eclecticism unsettled her contemporaries while at the same time giving new impulses and raising new questions about the form and function of modernism. [Pachmanová 2004]. Her artistic output was multifaceted in both the genre and style – in her text Realismus a fantasie (Realism and Imagination), Alžběta Birnbaumová claimed that this “bipolarity” and oscillation between expressiveness, symbolism, and neoclassical idealization were “naturally a fruit of a sensitive and vibrant spirit.” [Birnbaumová 1944]

The poet František Halas commented on Burghauserová’s exhibition in the periodical Právo lidu. In his opinion, she was one of the few women artists who possessed artistic individuality and created actual values “whose existence is neither fashionable nor resembling embroidery.” [Halas 1927] Burghauserová’s strength, according to Halas, lay in her sense of composition. Unlike the Cubists, she deforms figures with a purpose – they represent an emotional state, which she further accentuates through contrasting shades of green, purple, and yellow, which “in this world of convulsions, astonishment, and delight, elevates these states to exaltation” [ibid.] Halas’s commentary on women’s art in general illustrates the stereotypical lens through which women artists were perceived at the time. 

The reviewer in the magazine Ženský svět (Women’s World) describes Burghauserová as “a strong, feminine individuality who sings through shape and colour, expressing her burning, strong, uncompromising inner self" [Atsebešová 1927]. Her work, then, is not just flat, academic painting but a kind of projection – a mirror – of her inner struggles, offering something to identify with to those who, like her, suffer, fight, and win. [ibid.]

Zdenka Burghauserová was one of the founding members of the Circle of Women Artists and one of the few whom art critics respected, both professionally and artistically. During her career, she exhibited in Amsterdam, The Hague, and Paris, where she participated in the Salon des Indépendants art show. However, her significance in the Czech milieu must be considered within the context of women’s professional art through which the artists “strove to convey the individual female experience associated with bodily sensations and entangled in a network of socio-cultural relations.” [Pachmanová 2004] 

At the end of her text, Alžběta Birnbaumová writes about Burghauserová’s timeless idealistic realism, which, like the artist herself, has yet to be fully appreciated. According to Jindřich Čadík, she could be “considered the voice of an entire generation” and “the first artist who dared to become a painter of the female soul, and therein lies her importance and merit” [Čadík 1934]. Although her drawings and paintings appear in the Czech museum collections, Burghauserová would be almost forgotten today were it not for feminist and gender-oriented art history, which continues to draw attention to her importance in the search for a new conception of female identity.

Kamila Červinková

Works Cited

Atsebešová 1927: Ludmila Atsebešová, Výtvarné umění: Výstava Zdenky Burghauserová v Krasoumné jednotě, Ženský svět XXXI, 1927, no.  11, 15. 6., pp. 182–184 

Birnbaumová 1944: Realismus a fantasie v díle Zdenky Burghauserové, In: Rudolf Rouček – Jindřich Čadík – Alžběta Birnbaumová, Zdenka Burghauserová (k její souborné výstavě), Praha 1944, p. 9

Čadík 1935: Jindřich Čadík, Malířka Zdenka Burghauserová: Katalog výstavy Zdenky Burghauserové, výstavní pavilon K.V.U. Aleš v Brně: 20 October – 12 November 1935

Čapek 1927: Josef Čapek, Výstava Zdenky Burghauserové, Lidové noviny XXXV, 1927, no. 257, 21. 5., p. 9

Halas 1927: František Halas, Výstava Zdenky Burghauserové, Právo lidu XXXVI, 1927, 29. 5., p. 9

Mašek 1948: Jaroslav Mašek, Zdeňka Burghauserová, Plzeň 1948

Pachmanová 2004: Martina Pachmanová, Neznámá území českého moderního umění: Pod lupou genderu, Praha 2004, p. 130, 132

Veselý 1927: Veselý Ad. [Adolf], Obrazy Zdenky Burghauserové, České slovo XIX, 1927, no.  124, 25.5., p. 6

Further Reading

Libuše Heczková – Martina Pachmanová – Petr Šámal, Jak odlesk měsíce v jezeře. Česká teorie a kritika umění v genderových souvislostech, 1865–1945, Řevnice 2014, p. 16, 177–180, 204

Alžběta Birnbaumová – Jindřich Čadík – Rudolf Rouček, Zdenka Burghauserová: k její souborné výstavě, Praha 1944

Martina Pachmanová, Zrození umělkyně z pěny limonády: genderové kontexty české moderní teorie a kritiky umění, Praha 2013, pp. 122–125

Martina Pachmanová, Neznámá území českého moderního umění: Pod lupou genderu, Praha 2004, pp. 129-132 

Prokop Toman, Slovník československých výtvarných umělců, Praha 1927, p. 37