Josef Capek (1887-1945) was one of Czech modernism's most formative protagonists. The artist first studied weaving before finding his métier as both a painter and designer. During a short stint in Paris, he befriended the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who was then the leading theorist of and driving force behind Cubism. Capek adopted the Cubist style, fusing it with moodier elements of Expressionism and Symbolism to create a uniquely Czech take on the style. Alongside his work as a painter, Capek designed several hundred book covers from 1918 until his death in 1945 for Czech publications of early twentieth-century authors such as Apollinaire, Karel Capek, Jan Bartos, Josef Hora, Josef Kopta, Pierre Mac Orlan, Giovanni Papini, Pirandello, Miroslav Rutte and Georg Trakl and nineteenth-century authors such as Flaubert, Goethe, Kropotkin, Sheridan Le Fanu and Arthur Machen. Capek's designs were much celebrated in Czechoslavakia for their simplicity and their virtuoso use of linocut. Itself a beautiful publication, The Book Design of Josef Capek: Seeing The Book presents a fully-illustrated and complete survey of this rarely seen work.

The Book Design of Josef Capek: Seeing The Book: The Modern Czech Book 3 (Moderni ceska kniha / The Modern Czech Book, 3)

Arts & Photography

Graphic Design

Kant

It was not so long ago that one would have been hard pressed to find a single Czech name in most western European or American books on the history of photography. Today, things are very different: photographers like Josef Sudek, Frantisek Drtikol, Jaromír Funke, Josef Koudelka, Jan Saudek and Antonín Kratochvíl enjoy international acclaim, and as Czechoslovakia emerged from over half-century of totalitarian rule, the rest of the world was astounded to discover that such a small nation could boast so many talented and original photographers. Nonetheless, entire chapters of the history of Czech photography remain largely neglected. Czech Photography of the 20th Century is the first volume to survey the main trends, figures and masterpieces of Czech photography from the beginning to the end of the last century. Its 517 plates include not only the most historically important photographs and photomontages, but also works that have lain buried in archives and rare books, or photographs published for the first time.

Czech Photography of the 20th Century

Photography & Video

Sculptor Ladislav Zívr (1909-1980), a leading exponent of modernism in Czechoslovakia, most commonly worked with fired clay, aiming for simplicity and fecundity of form. This catalogue celebrates his life's work and documents his participation in the 1962 Venice Biennale.

Ladislav Zívr

Individual Artists

Viktor Kolár is the Czech Republic's most important urban photographer, and is especially famed for his photo-chronicles of his hometown of Ostrava. Kolár brings a politicized existentialism to the "decisive moment" principle, recording traces of civic alienation and anthropologically telling scenarios. Kolár is the only Czech photographer to have received the Mother Jones International Photography Award (1991).

Viktor Kolár: Ostrava

Bush, Kate

Balabán, Jan

Volf, Peter

Hounded by the Czech Communist regime in the 1960s, the controversial photographer Miroslav Tich∆ (born 1926) has today found acclaim for his photographs of women taken with homemade cameras. This handsomely produced Tich∆ monograph is unique among Tichy publications for two reasons: firstly because the photographs, drawn from private collections, are all previously unpublished; and secondly because it is conceived and authored by the Italian former Situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti, who has likewise come into conflict with state authorities, having been deported from France and Italy several times for his work with Guy Debord. The bulk of the photographs in this volume are derived from Sanguinetti's Tich∆ collection, and are prefaced with a lengthy meditation on the photographer by Sanguinetti, who declares his admiration for Tich∆'s personal and artistic disregard for social conventions, and the anti-modernist character of his methods and materials.

Miroslav Tichy: Form of Truth

Photographer Roman Burda (born 1966) is known for his exploration of African landscapes, especially in Ethiopia. His genuine and intimate relationships with the locals of the Omo River region have allowed him to document rapidly disappearing elements of African culture, including many controversial rituals and celebrations that have been outlawed.

Roman Burda: Ethiopia: Omo River, Ceremonies and Rituals

With numerous bound-in color booklets, this beautifully produced monograph compiles the photographs and video installations of Czech artist Alena Kotzmannov (born 1974). Her grainy, painterly black-and-white photographs of city scenes and landscapes are often rendered even more painterly by being exposed onto canvas.

Alena Kotzmannová: Kotzmann

A protagonist of Czech avant-garde photography, Jaroslav Rössler (1902–1990) is less well known for his paintings and drawings, which in the 1920s were an equal part of his output. Resembling the pre-Suprematist paintings of Malevich or the careful compositions of Juan Gris, these works are presented for the first time in this monograph.

Jaroslav Rössler: Drawing and Paintings

Stepán, Petr

History & Criticism

In 1980, Jir?í George Erml (1945–2008) emigrated from his native Czechoslovakia to the United States, where he settled in Brooklyn and worked as a freelance photographer. Erml was immediately enchanted by the bars of New York, and began to photograph them: Casablanca in Harlem (since closed), Chumley’s in Greenwich Village, Montero and John Hanley’s in Brooklyn, Woods Inn in Queens, George’s Rockaway Cove on Staten Island, the Golden Note Café in the Bronx and many others. This volume is a tribute to a little-documented aspect of New York life.

Jiri George Erml: New York Collected Bars, 1990-1994

Suda, Kristián

In mid-1960s Czechoslovakia, prior to the Soviet invasion, the hippie ethos reigned supreme. Photographer Jan Ságl (born 1942), now well known for his photographs of Paris, was on hand to document the communes, bands and performances of the time. He photographed the scenes around the artist Zorka Ságlová, the art theorist Vera Jirousová and bands such as the Primitives Group, the Plastic People of the Universe, DG 307, Aktual and others. In the spring of 1976, while Ságl and his wife were holidaying at their weekend cottage, the police cracked down on the circle around these bands, searching homes, interrogating "suspects" and making arrests. Ságl returned home just in time to hide his photographs, which would otherwise have led to many further arrests. They remained hidden, and were eventually thought lost, until 2012, when Ságl unearthed the images--compiling them in this astonishing, massive panorama of an otherwise undocumented Czech counterculture.

Jan Ságl: Plastic People Primitives Group: Dancing on the Double Ice

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