Years of long days

subtitle: Surrealism in Czechoslovakia

type of document: podřazený dokument
parent document: Third Text
imprint date: 1996
page: 15-28
language: anglický

notes:
Abstract: Presents a history of Surrealism in Czechoslovakia from the 1920s to the present. The authors explain that Surrealism in Czechoslovakia has developed in response to national political and cultural changes, evolving out of the Prague avant-garde and Devetsil and established as a movement in its own right in 1932, with a manifesto written by Viteslav Nezval. They describe the work of some of its founding members, including Stÿrskÿ, Toyen and Josef Síma, and the political in-fighting that followed Nezval's conversion to communism, and explain that, during German occupation, the movement was suppressed, and by the end of the War the founding members were either dead, in exile, or converts to Stalinism. They consider the activities of two groups - the Ra group and the Sporilov group - who formed in the 1940s around Surrealist ideologies, examining the war-obsessed work of four of their members, Václav Tikal, Josef Istler, Libor Fara and Zbynek Havlicek, and the semi-abstract, semi-figurative work of Mikulás Medek in the 1950s, and describing how they carried the movement forward. They chronicle the relaxing of repression in the 1960s which allowed the movement to re-emerge, describe the work of artists including Jan Svankmajer, Eva Svankmajerová, Karol Baron and Alena Nadvornikova, who have worked in the Surrealist style since the 1960s, and considers the effect on Surrealism of the Soviet occupation of 1968 and perestroika.

Years of long days

Years of long days

Years of long days

Years of long days