Otto M. Urban Livres

Born from a bizarre, fin-de-siècle amalgam of dandyism, occultism and Symbolism, Decadence moved the Romantic imagination firmly indoors, into a morbid, mauve-hued interior with Redon on the walls and Poe on the bookshelves. Czech art was well suited to express the Decadent temperament, and In Morbid Colours reveals, for the first time, the incredible cornucopia of fantastical, proto-Surrealist art produced under this rubric between 1880 and 1914. Full of superb color illustrations, it details the work of artists such as Frantisek Bilek, Karel Hlavácek, Frantisek Kavan, Benes Knüpfer, Gabriel Max, Alfons Mucha, Max Pirner, Jan Preisler, Jakub Schikaneder, Hanus Schwaiger, Max Svabinsky and Josef Váchal, as well as artists with ties to Czech art such as Alfred Kubin, August Brömse and Richard Teschner. All of these artists constitute a hitherto-undiscovered world unto themselves, and each is embellished here with superbly-researched commentary and excerpts from contemporaneous Decadent literature.

Monografie malíře, grafika, kreslíře a ilustrátora Jana Híska. Kniha zachycuje autorovu intenzívní tvorbu mezi lety 1995 a 2001. Jan Rous o jeho mystickém díle řekl: „Hískova fantazie si sice vytváří blízké snové bytosti, jejich základ je ovšem prvotně podmíněn světlem. Rodí se ze světla, aby vzdorovaly temnotě nebo ji dokonce překonávaly, jsou plny pozitivní zvěsti, bytostně sakrálních obsahů.“ Vázaná kniha plná velkoformátových reprodukcí Hískových kreseb a maleb s úvodem a texty Charlotty Kotíkové, Otto M. Urbana a Tomáše Pospiszyla. Svá výtvarná díla doprovodil sám autor několika poetickými texty.

In his books, Otto M. Urban was the first person to define Czech Symbolism in the fine arts as a distinct phenomenon acting in a proclamatory fashion as part of the broader European artistic stream. Thanks to his insight, Czech art found its place within the natural context of European culture. The exhibition and the book Mysterious Distances juxtaposes renowned artists such as Mucha, Kupka, Pirner, Knüpfer, Schwaiger, Švabinský, Bílek, Šaloun, Zrzavý, Staeger and Teschner with many lesser known or newly discovered figures. The book includes an anthology of critical texts of the time and essays devoted to Symbolism in literature, theatre and applied art.