50 Masterpieces of Czech Cubism

• The Czech contribution to Cubism was one of the most important in Europe: this book presents its leading lights
• Draws on the practical Director’s Choice presentation and format: a clear and user-friendly guide that will appeal to experts and those new to Czech Cubism
• The perfect complement to the 2019 title on the Gallery’s collections, exploring one of its richest elements in greater depth

Czech Cubism is one of the most important contributions of modern Czech art to world culture. These works, created approximately between 1910 and 1935, embrace painting, drawing, graphic art, collage, sculpture, architecture and applied art, and the movement’s leading lights – including painters Emil Filla and Bohumil Kubišta, sculptor Otto Gutfreund and architect Pavel Janák – were among the most exciting practitioners of Cubism anywhere in the world.

The Gallery of West Bohemia is home to one of the most important collections of the best Czech Cubist art, painstakingly assembled since the early 1960s. The artworks included here have played a vital role in rehabilitating the avant-garde in a country where modernist art had suffered decades of political repression. As such, the collections of the Gallery of West Bohemia have been crucial to the revival of the domestic art scene in Bohemia and beyond, and continue to inspire contemporary Czech artists.

This book, expertly compiled by Gallery Director Roman Musil and his team, introduces some of the finest works of Czech Cubism to an international audience.

Roman Musil has been the Director of the Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen since December 2007. He previously worked in the Ministry of Culture and in the National Gallery in Prague. He specialises in the art and cultural history of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is also author of The Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen: Director’s Choice, published by Scala in 2019.