Vojta Beneš

“ And yet there lay in the soul of the Bohemian people immense treasures of the national artistic spirit—treasures of folk art. When in the era of religious expansion of Bohemian Brethren, these modest but rare creators of better Christian life were preserving for the future days their songs and hymnals, they decorated them with drawings, paintings, miniatures and illuminations so perfect in their delicacy, so thoroughly artistic, that to-day we turn back to them with great respect and admiration. ”

“ A unique place among Bohemian artists is held by František Kupka and Emil Holárek. Their life, like all of their art, is consecrated to the struggle for truth and democracy. Kupka’s brush flays European art of the present day while Holárek’s work assails the lust for gold, brutal militarism and mercenary ecclesiasticism. Today two unconquerable social forces, capital and the state and its church under military organization are waging a great struggle against the people who physically, mentally and materially bear the world on their shoulders. ”

“ While in the upper strata of the Germanized Society the sense for the old Bohemian Culture was being lost, the Bohemian and Slovak people lived in their reminiscences, dressed in characteristic national dress, decorated their homes with exquisite embroidery, surrounded themselves with furniture of the original, national style, painted Easter Eggs, made original toys for their children, doves, dolls and roosters, steeped their whole lives in poesy, which had its source in their pure souls. ”

“ Our nation began to live spiritually. Then was the Bohemian Art born. Its beginning was necessarily simple, nor was there anything characteristically Bohemian in it. The Arts Academy of Prague was directed by the Germans in a soulless formalism, without devotion, without enthusiasm. It was more a trade than an art they taught. Religious painting was ossified in commercial religious pictures; landscapes which came from the brushes of painters of those days were not the fruit of the study of nature, but of lifeless phantasy and mechanical theory of combination of colors ”

“ There is not a child in the land of the Bohemians and the Slovaks that does not know Aleš. His sketches of children, soldiers, horses and cows, and the joys and other phases of child-life are the Bohemian child’s constant companions. No one in the whole world but Aleš could draw for the Bohemian child horses and soldiers and the joy of life and youth. ”

“ The more noted of the young Bohemian artists are Jan Preisler whose paintings portray various moods of Nature and are characterized by rich colors and a certain dreamy, mysterious, indescribable charm. With him ranks Hugo Boetinger, a refined portrait painter, František Šimon, a creator of wonderful etchings, nurtured in Paris and known also in American art circles, Jakub Obrovský, a Moravian artist of deep penetration. ”

“ Rudolf Bém, the delicate Victor Stretti, the poet of the sea Beneš Knüpfer; the genius in decorative art, who awakened the sincere interest of France and the United States, Alfons Mucha, and a whole list of other young artists, whose lines are being thinned by death on the battlefields where Austria is driving them with other great men of the Bohemian nation all these constituted the hopeful army, which promised its nation a brilliant future in art. ”

“ But one of the greatest of the Bohemian artists, who found his inspiration in the soul of his people, is the Moravian Slovak, Jóža Úprka. Disgust with the artificiality of city life brought him back to the good Slovak peasantry. In a quiet retreat in southern Moravia, he lived simply with his beloved country-folk, depicting their soul and their daily life. His paintings are passionate songs of color, light, youth and strength and joy of life; they are passionate paeans of the hot southern Moravian sun and the healthy vigorous people of that wonderful land. His typical peasant figures ”

“ When after the fall of the Bohemian Kingdom during the XVII Century the Bohemian intellectuals scattered into all corners of the earth it was the good fortune for the people to live in the heart of the Bohemian Lands as if forgotten and unheeded as to their culture. ”

“ F. X. Harlas, the Bohemian art critic, correctly says of him: “A beautiful human body means to him what it meant to Manes: the glory of the human race.”
Mikuláš Aleš, the most characteristically Bohemian and most beloved of the Bohemian artists, was born in 1852, in the poor Southeastern part of Bohemia. Although Manes’ art, in spite of its Bohemianism and Slavism, might be classed as international, Aleš’ art itself can only be classed as typically Bohemian. He simply cannot be understood by the foreign world ”

“ His portraits mirror the soul and character of the great men they represent; they mirror their endeavor and work which made them great. His masterly portrait of our great composer Bedřich Smetana, his portraits of Rieger, Masaryk, Aleš, Manes, Neruda, and a great line of others are the most perfect of all that have ever been produced by the brush of Bohemian portrait painters. ”

“ In the art of the common people, in the folk song, and in cherished tradition lived the national spirit gagged and bound, waiting for the moment when the savior would free it from the mediaeval dungeon in which it was chained so cruelly and long. ”

“ The inspiration of Úprka is the strength and energy in the life of his Slovaks, with their beautiful, unpolluted lives, their healthful and joyous souls, with which they really created their great master, whose art but recently dazzled all Europe. ”

“ This beautiful and in fact brilliant Bohemian Art succumbed to counter-reformation, as indeed did all the Bohemian Culture. Luckily, however, the counter-reformation could not completely destroy the character of the national spirit. In the simple peasant folk there was kept alive the national song with which grew up the national art of the people. ”

“ He was a pupil of the Parisian school, where he learned to paint from nature itself. Up to that time Bohemia had been the home of landscape and romanticism, where the artists had painted and drawn landscape according to their wild fancy, without regard to truth. ”

“ It is he who warms the Bohemian heart.
Aleš improved upon Manes in his portrayal of the Bohemian-Slovak type. His type of the peasant, his Hussite warrior, “the defender of the word of God”, and his type of the Bohemian child, with which he illustrates the Bohemian song, is not merely an illustration, it is a3 song in itself, breathing the spirit of the Bohemian mothers, the Bohemian meadows and the Bohemian history, voicing the joys of the harvest and Christmas as the yearning Bohemian soul feels them. ”