Cubism in Prague: A Renaissance of Architecture and Culture

In the early 20th century, Prague was a city of vibrant contrasts, where modern technology and avant-garde art coexisted with historical traditions. Amidst this dynamic landscape, cubist architecture emerged as a distinctive style, symbolizing Prague’s unique blend of innovation and cultural richness.
Shortly before World War I, Prague was a peculiar and astonishing city, brimming with historical and cultural contradictions. The Prague sky was dotted with the first airplanes. Factories in the suburbs produced the most efficient and fastest locomotives in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The financial activities of Prague's banks extended to the Balkans, Persia, and Egypt. "Palaces of commerce" emerged. The construction industry employed the most modern reinforced concrete technologies. The theory of relativity and psychoanalysis, Kafka, and the Prague Golem all contributed to a cultural life torn between the secular, glamorous cafes in the city and the underground dance halls and beer halls in the Czech suburbs.
A mix of modern technologies and ideas, provincialism, nationalism, and the restraint of Prague's communities sharply contrasted with the cosmopolitanism of Prague's elites and the explosion of early 20th-century technologies, with futurism and cubism being constant topics of conversation. In the brief period from 1911 to 1912, it was quite possible to encounter Edison, Einstein, Le Corbusier, or Lenin on the city streets. Language, political, and cultural barriers separated the German and Jewish enclaves from the Czech majority of rural or working-class origin. It was easier for Czechs to communicate with the French, and for Prague Germans—with Berlin Germans. Here, cosmopolitanism and provincialism coexisted, alongside openness to the world and nationalism. Prague never became a city equal in significance to Vienna and Budapest. The avant-garde art of Prague's cubists attempted to bridge these differences, yet it could not fully achieve this. It was limited by them, but at the same time, it exploited them for its creative impulse. This is perhaps especially true regarding the most original and curious branch of Prague cubism—cubist architecture.

The young Prague sculptor-expressionist Otto Gutfreund and expressionist artists Bohumil Kubišta, Emil Filla, and Josef Čapek were introduced to the cubist paintings of Picasso and Braque in Paris between 1909 and 1910. From 1910, Vincenc Kramář, a Prague art historian and pupil of Riegl, began collecting cubist paintings by Picasso and Braque. In 1911, Prague's followers of cubism—artists, sculptors, architects, poets, and art historians—founded the association "Skupina výtvarných umělců" (Group of Creative Artists), which published the magazine "Umělecký měsíčník"(Art Monthly) from 1911 to 1914. Members of the Group and their like-minded colleagues recognized the global significance of Parisian cubism and believed that Picasso had given them a completely new view of the world. Cubist architecture in Prague was not limited to simply borrowing Picasso's painting methodology. Cubist architects found inspiration in cubist painting, especially in the way various pictorial planes overlapped each other. They were also interested in characteristic inclined, curved, and pyramidal forms, which they embodied in their projects.

In the second half of 1913, Prague's cubists faced disagreements and began to develop more diverse styles. This was a period of post-rationalization and the formation of personal artistic approaches. Their goal was to reflect the impulses of "synthetic cubism in painting" in architecture. This second stage of the development of Prague's cubist architecture led to the creation of unique styles by individual architects. They sought to preserve cubist principles, but at the same time introduced individual features. It was a period of creative evolution, where architects experimented with forms, proportions, and decorative elements. Cubism became a demonstration of design in public competitions. Many of them attracted participants inclined to the cubist style. For example, the competition for new public buildings in Pardubice (1913), the Rieger burial mound on Mount Kozákov (1914), and the crematorium in Pardubice (1919) marked the end of the second stage of cubist architecture. Pavel Janák was one of the key architects of this period. He began adapting a Baroque house for Vojtěch Fara, using an earlier "pyramidal" or "oblique" approach.

However, in 1913 he devised a new form characterized by "facade elements" parallel to the facade surface. This was a period of creative evolution. Sculptural elements on the pediment no longer grew only diagonally but also along a curve in the form of rounded segments.

Interestingly, some of Janák's projects were strikingly colorful, and he tried to return to a sense of "healthy, vibrant colors" Josef Gočár also made his contribution, with the House of the Black Madonna and the sanatorium in Bohdanec, skillfully applying innovative reinforced concrete technology.

Even before the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic in October 1918, Pavel Janák urged his friends to seek typically Czech architectural forms, based on a sociological study of the customs of the Czech family and public life. He believed that this new architecture, largely denying the cubism of 1911-1913, should once again pay attention to utility, public benefit, and the intelligibility of design. The collective Czech experience was to become the starting point for new architectural space, new apartments, houses, gardens, and cities. From 1921 to 1922, the new style, known as the "national style", "rounded cubism", "rondo-cubism," or "Legion Bank style," influenced both the facades and interiors of new buildings.

This style also affected the character of the interior space, plans, and sections. Janák's Adria vestibule and Gočár's main hall of the Czechoslovak Legion Bank are examples of this architectural era. The "national style" embodied Štech's theory that ornamentation is one of the most typical manifestations of the Czech genius loci, demonstrating knowledge of the ornamentation of folk architecture.

Although cubism represents only a brief episode in the history of architecture, in the Czech Republic (especially in the capital), it occupies an important place. It was a short but bright flash of futurism and the defiance of Czech architects, economic and financial success, and the birth of the Czechoslovak Republic. There is no other country in the world where cubist architecture has become as popular as here. It seems that this is a paradox of time: a style that today so fascinates did not cause delight in its day. Contemporary experts were extremely critical, considering it too chaotic, eccentric, and inconvenient. However, a small group of pioneers (among them well-known architects Josef Gočár, Emil Kralíček, Pavel Janák, and Josef Chochol) did not give up.

They proposed and designed several unique buildings that still adorn the streets of Prague.

And when you find yourself in Prague, don't forget to stop by the Grand Café Orient. There you can enjoy a cup of coffee in amazing interiors that will surely restore your geometric balance.