Karel Teige (13 December 1900 – 1 October 1951) was a Czech
modernist
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
artist, writer, critic and one of the most important figures of the 1920s and 1930s movement. He was a member of the ''
Devětsil'' (Butterbur) movement in the 1920s and also worked as an editor and graphic designer for Devětsil's monthly magazine ''ReD'' (''Revue Devětsilu''). One of his major works on architecture theory is ''The Minimum Dwelling'' (1932).
Life and career
Teige was born in
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...
. With evidently endless energy, he introduced modern art to
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...
. ''Devětsil''-sponsored exhibitions and events brought international avant-garde figures like
Le Corbusier,
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to eac ...
,
Paul Klee
Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented ...
,
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (, ; rus, Влади́мир Влади́мирович Маяко́вский, , vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ məjɪˈkofskʲɪj, Ru-Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.ogg, links=y; – 14 Apr ...
, and
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one ...
, among many others, to lecture and perform in Prague. Teige interpreted their work, sometimes literally, for the Czech audience. In his 1935 Prague lecture,
André Breton paid tribute to his "perfect intellectual fellowship" with Teige and
Nezval: "Constantly interpreted by Teige in the most lively way, made to undergo an all-powerful lyric thrust by Nezval, Surrealism can flatter itself that it has blossomed in Prague as it has in Paris."
Although not an architect, Teige was an articulate and knowledgeable architecture critic, an active participant in
CIAM, and friends with
Hannes Meyer
Hans Emil "Hannes" Meyer (18 November 1889 – 19 July 1954) was a Swiss architect and second director of the Bauhaus Dessau from 1928 to 1930.
Early life
Meyer was born in Basel, Switzerland, trained as a mason, and practiced as an architect ...
, the second director of the
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...
.
From 1929 to 1930 he gave guest lectures at the Bauhaus in
Dessau.
[Dluhosch, Eric (ed.); Svacha, Rostislav (ed.) (1999) ''Karel Teige / 1900-1951: L’enfant terrible of the Czech modernist avant-garde''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.] At the same time, he participated in the establishment of the
Left Front.
Teige and Meyer both believed in a scientific,
functionalist approach to architecture, grounded in
Marxist principles. In 1929 he famously criticized Le Corbusier's
Mundaneum
The Mundaneum was an institution which aimed to gather together all the world's knowledge and classify it according to a system called the Universal Decimal Classification. It was developed at the turn of the 20th century by Belgian lawyers Paul ...
project (planned for
Geneva
, neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier
, website = https://www.geneve.ch/
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...
but never built) on the grounds that Corbusier had departed from rational functionalism, and was on his way to becoming a mere stylist. Teige believed that 'the only aim and scope of modern architecture is the scientific solution of exact tasks of rational construction.'
After welcoming the
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
army as liberators, Teige was silenced by the
Communist government in 1948. In 1951 he died in Prague of a heart attack, said to be a result of a ferocious Soviet press campaign against him as a '
Trotskyist
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...
degenerate,' his papers were destroyed by the secret police, and his published work was suppressed for decades.
Writings
Original versions
Studies
* ''Stavba a báseň'' (1927)
* ''Svět, který se směje'' (1928)
* ''Svět, který voní'' (1930)
* ''Surrealismus proti proudu'' (1938)
* ''Jarmark umění'' (1964)
Scientific writings
* ''Archipenko'' (1923)
* ''Jan Zrzavý'' (1923)
* ''Soudobá mezinárodní architektura'' (1928)
* ''Sovětská kultura'' (1928)
* ''Moderní architektura v Československu'' (1930. Translated to English and published as ''Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia and Other Writings'' in 2000)
* ''Nejmenší byt'' (1932. Translated to English and published as ''The Minimum Dwelling'' in 2002)
* ''Zahradní města nezaměstnaných'' (1933)
* ''Architektura pravá a levá'' (1934)
* ''Vývoj sovětské architektury'' (1936)
* ''Vladimír Majakovskij'' (1936)
* ''Štyrský a Toyen'' (1938 with
Vítězslav Nezval
Vítězslav Nezval (; 26 May 1900 – 6 April 1958) was a Czech poet, writer and translator. He was one of the most prolific avant-garde Czech writers in the first half of the 20th century and a co-founder of the Surrealist movement in Czechos ...
)
* ''Moderní fotografie v Československu'' (1947)
* ''Sociologie architektury'' (date unknown)
* ''Fenomenologie moderního umění'' (unfinished work, ''The Phenomenology of Modern Art''. Two parts of this work were published posthumously as ''Vývojové proměny v umění'' (''Developmental Changes in Art'') in 1966.)
English Editions
*''Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia and Other Writings'' (Texts & Documents), J P Getty Trust Pubn, 2000,
*''The Minimum Dwelling'',
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962.
History
The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...
, 2002,
Secondary literature
*''Karel Teige. L'Enfant Terrible of the Czech Modernist Avant-Garde'', ed. by Eric Dluhosch and Rostislav Svácha, MIT Press, 1999, - includes 4 Essays of Teige
*Esther Levinger: "A life in nature - Karel Teige's journey from Poetism to Surrealism" In: ''Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte'', vol. 67.2004, 3, pp. 401–420
*Peter A. Zusi: "The Style of the Present: Karel Teige on Constructivism and Poetism" in: ''Representations'', 88. Fall 2004, pp. 102–124
*''Prager Architektur und die europäische Moderne'', ed. by Tomáš Valena and Ulrich Winko, Berlin: Mann, 2006
*Radu-Alexandra Răuţă: "Shifting meanings of modernism: parallels and contrasts between Karel Teige and
Cezar Lăzărescu" in: ''The journal of architecture'', Royal Institute of British Architects. - Bd. 14.2009, 1, S. 27-44
References
External links
On Teige's erotic surrealist photomontagesDreams and DisillusionKarel Teige and the Czech Avant-Garde
Numerous examples of Karel Teige's work
{{DEFAULTSORT:Teige, Karel
1900 births
1951 deaths
Artists from Prague
Czech artists
Photographers from Prague
Academic staff of the Bauhaus
Czech journalists
Czech translators
Czech literary critics
Czech surrealist writers
Czech surrealist artists
Surrealist poets
Czech communists
Czechoslovak communists
20th-century translators
Writers from Prague
20th-century journalists