NYAB Event - "Home Art: Exhibition of Czech Fold Design from the 1950s–1980s"

"Home Art: Exhibition of Czech Fold Design from the 1950s–1980s"

Czech Center New York / The Bohemian National Hall

This event has ended.

Home Art is a phenomenon that arose in the second half of the 20th century in communist Czechoslovakia. It was made by people with no art education and with no ambition beyond an intent to create a piece of art simply for their and their family’s joy. These artifacts decorated the interiors of Communist era housing projects, countryside cottages, offices and workrooms, pubs and military dormitories.

Artistry, craftsmanship, and a peculiar design inspiration are much in evidence as one tours this collection which serves as a kind of document for the personal and widely felt response to the social and economic constraints of that era.

Pavla Niklova, Czech Center Director calls the exhibition “important because it is the first time Americans have the opportunity to look into the lives of Czechs during the years of Communist state control and see in a very tangible way a kind of vital, fun, and free-form expression. In this way the Home Art pieces are more than just peculiar or quirky creations – they represent a folk art that flourished in response to repression.”

Home Art, especially at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, complemented the “atomic style”, for which the name “Brussels style“ is used in Czechoslovakia after the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, where Czech designs won 27 gold medals.

While bursts of Czech Home Art activity can be seen in the mid 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the 1960s was the time when it reached its peak. By the fall of the communist regime in 1989, this modern folklore has more or less disappeared.

What these Home Art pieces may lack in formal aesthetic import they more than make up for in sheer creativity and whimsy, and it is in this light as artifacts that they are best appreciated as they represent important historical and social evidence belonging to a bygone era.

Media

• Sculpture
• Crafts

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