Czech Secession

A lavishly illustrated exploration of forward-looking Czech art around the turn of the twentieth century.

 

Though it’s less widely heralded than Berlin and Vienna, 1890s Prague was every bit as much a fin-de-siècle cultural center as its Mittel European peers. At the end of the nineteenth century, the city found itself home to a fervent coterie of young visual artists all deliberately pushing against—indeed, seeking to secede from—the traditional artistic structures of the day.

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This book traces Czech Secessionist art from the turn of the twentieth century by following its three main stylistic schools: naturalistic-impressionistic, symbolist, and ornamental-decorative. Though these styles developed separately, their symbiotic relationship gives the art a deeper significance and disrupts the traditional understanding of Art Nouveau and Secessionist art as an eclectic decorative style that faded away at the beginning of the twentieth century. Illustrated with more than three hundred color plates, Czech Secession is a fittingly lush tribute to one city’s underappreciated and forward-looking artistic blossoming.