VLASTISLAV HOFMAN. RYTHM OF COMPOSITION / INTERIOR & DESIGN OF CUBISM

Curator: Lucie Vlčková
Architecture: Dušan Seidl

This intimate exhibition conceived on the occasion of the author’s anniversary (140 years since his birth and 60 years since his death) brings together the most significant works of Hofman’s extremely impressive interior design and design work, which, together with the works of his artistic contemporaries, namely of Pavel Janák, Josef Gočár and Josef Chochol, gave rise to the world-unique phenomenon of Czech Cubism, developed in a comprehensive way in applied art and architecture. The exhibition is comprised of works from the collections of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague and from the private collection of the author’s heirs.

The distinctive creative personality of Vlastislav Hofman (1884-1964) manifested itself artistically in a unique and extremely inventive way in a wide range of disciplines and stylistic transformations in architecture, design and art of the first half of the 20th century. In his work, produced in an environment that fostered the impulses of Cubism, one of the first currents of the European avant-garde, Hofman strived to create new forms based on the application of rhythmic composition and the reduction of expressive elements to the smoothness and purity of surfaces and the inherent character of materials. He found inspiration not only within the circle of artists of the Artěl Association and the Artists‘ Group, of which he was a member, but also in contemporary foreign art and expressions outside the classical architectural order, such as the furniture design of the Biedermeier era. The emphasis on the logic of form and the simplification of the form of matter to an elementary system of verticals, horizontals and sloping planes was evident in Hofmann’s architectural and interior designs and realisations, ceramics, graphics, book design, drawings, scenographic designs and paintings from the period roughly between 1910 and 1921.