Alena Pomajzlová

The collection of Czech interwar modern art at the Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen presents a wide spectrum of artistic trends from 1918 to 1938, from early pre-WWI Modernism, Expressionism and Poetism to avant-garde experiments and Surrealism. Great attention is also paid to social art and the so-called New Objectivity. The collection, built up mainly in the 1960s and 1970s by the Gallery’s first director, Oldrich Kuba (and expanded ever since), includes works by personalities such as Josef Šíma, Jindrich Štyrský, Toyen, František Muzika, Jan Zrzavý, Václav Špála, Emil Filla, Josef Capek, Bohumil Kubišta, František Tichý, Otakar Coubine, Antonín Procházka and others. The forthcoming publication offers a wealth of visual material in the form of reproductions of all the works included, together with interpretative texts introducing their authors and explaining the origin and content of the works and their significance in a broader cultural and historical context.

Czech Cubism is one of the most important contributions of modern Czech art to world culture. These works, created approximately between 1910 and 1935, embrace painting, drawing, graphic art, collage, sculpture, architecture and applied art, and the movement’s leading lights – including painters Emil Filla and Bohumil Kubišta, sculptor Otto Gutfreund and architect Pavel Janák – were among the most exciting practitioners of Cubism anywhere in the world. The Gallery of West Bohemia is home to one of the most important collections of the best Czech Cubist art, painstakingly assembled since the early 1960s. The artworks included here have played a vital role in rehabilitating the avant-garde in a country where modernist art had suffered decades of political repression. As such, the collections of the Gallery of West Bohemia have been crucial to the revival of the domestic art scene in Bohemia and beyond, and continue to inspire contemporary Czech artists. This book, expertly compiled by Gallery Director Roman Musil and his team, introduces some of the finest works of Czech Cubism to an international audience.