Emil Filla (1882–1953)

Emil Filla is one of the most multifaceted individuals in modern Czech culture of the first half of the twentieth century. He demonstrated his vast talent and penetrating intellect not only in the field of visual arts (painting, printmaking and sculpture), but also as an experienced collector and writer. Beginning in 1903, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in Professor V. Bukovac’s studio. There, he gradually came into contact with other future members of the strong generation of Czech modernists: B. Feigl, B. Kubišta, A. Procházka, V. Beneš and O. Kubín. In 1906, he undertook a study trip to Germany, Holland, France and Italy, where he encountered the works of the Old Masters as well as those by contemporary artists, such as V. van Gogh, P. Cézanne, P. Bonnard and P. Picasso. In Bonnard, he found a necessary bridge between Impressionist approaches and modern imagery, which can be observed in such works as On the Veranda (1907). Like many others, he was also fascinated by the work of Edvard Munch, responding to it in The Reader of Dostoevsky (1907). In 1907, he and other members of the youngest generation of painters founded Osma (The Eight), a group orientated towards Expressionism; at their second exhibition, he presented a series of paintings from the Dubrovník area. The painting Red Ace (1909) can be viewed as the pinnacle of his early work and led to his joining the Mánes Association of Fine Artists and assuming the editorship of Volné směry.

 

Due to intergenerational conflicts, in 1911, he instigated the younger generation’s exit from Mánes and the founding of the Skupina výtvarných umělců (Group of Visual Artists). From 1912 to 1913, Filla produced paintings that freely combined various periods of the Cubism he had observed in the works of Picasso and G. Braque. Under their influence, he progressed from a Cubo-Expressionist understanding of form toward an abstracted reduction of the three-dimensional model to its spatial and volumetric relationships. Along with the sculptor O. Gutfreund, he was thus one of the first in Europe to expand Cubist forms in the medium of sculpture; the sculpture Head (1913) is a product of these attempts. It was primarily still lifes, however, that allowed Filla to explore questions of form more freely. He developed a centripetal pictorial system, emphasising spatial plasticity and the image’s rhythmic structure.

 

He spent 1914 to 1920 in Holland, where, enchanted by the still lifes of the seventeenth-century Dutch Masters, he created some of his most impressive Cubist works. Over the course of the 1920s, he evolved his own version of synthetic Cubism and, around 1928, a more lyrical Cubism, which presaged elements of Surrealism in his oeuvre. His work took a turn around 1935 when, due to the influence of Picasso as well as the study of Scythian art and Renaissance bronzes, he pivoted to new subject matter: animal and human struggles and conflicts. The first postwar exhibition at the Mánes Association of Fine Artists was devoted to Filla (the introduction to the catalogue was written by V. Kramář). After the war, Filla’s style transformed. He created a series of genre works in the spirit of Cubist Expressionism on motifs from Czech and Slovak folk songs, which – in an attempt to merge the tradition of European sensualist painting and Chinese brush technique – he painted exclusively with Indian ink on large, curved paper. His wide-ranging artistic career came to a close with a cycle of colourful ink paintings of views of the Central Bohemian Highlands in a narrow, horizontal format.