Throughout the abroad, students have been engaging with the history and production of modernist art and literature in the Czech lands. This afternoon we traveled to the Czech Cubism Museum in the Old Town to see one of the most recognizable forms of modern art: Cubism.
The Cubism Museum has its collections in the House of the Black Madonna, a cubist building designed by Josef Gočár. Completed in 1912, it is the earliest example of cubist architecture in Prague.
Here we are climbing the Baroque-inspired Cubist stairwell.
“Czech Cubism” (from the wall text):
“Cubism was one of the first avant-garde movements in Europe and had a great impact on the Czech lands as well. Besides asserting itself through painting and sculpture, it also influenced architecture, utilitarian objects and interior design. In the pan-European context, the extent of Cubism’s influence on the applied arts and architecture is unparalleled, making some of the art production of 1911-1914 entirely unique.”
“The shift in artistic expression was not as radical in the field of applied arts as it was in painting; fragmented forms gradually evolved as a logical link in the continuous development of ornament from organic to geometric, from the vitally variable to the constant…”
The museum features works by prominent Czech Cubists, including paintings by Emil Filla, Bohumil Kubišta, Josef Čapek and Václav Špála; sculptures by Otto Gutfreund; and individual pieces and suites of furniture Pavel Janák, Josef Gočár, Josef Chochol, Vlastislav Hofman, Otakar Novotný and František Kysela.
Students spent the afternoon in the museum drawing and writing in response to the objects on display. Soon they will be working on their very own cubist portraits and cubist short stories.
And should one need to take care of some Cubist business . . .
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