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Booksplendour
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JOSEF
ČAPEK
(1887 – 1945)
The
Čapek brothers - Josef (right), Karel (left) |
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| Josef Čapek was
his brother Karel’s senior by about three years. These days,
more than 60 years after his death, he is regarded as one of the
best Czech visual artists ever. Some of his paintings, including “Dívka
v růžových šatech” – Girl in the Pink Dress (1916) –
and “Koupel nohou” – Foot Bath (1921) both shown here, have
sold in 2007 at art auctions in the Czech Republic for the amounts
approaching one million US dollars each. That, amongst the Czech
artists, is second only to František Kupka’s Elevation IV,
which in 2007 had fetched about 1 ˝ million dollars. |
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| Josef Čapek at first studied weaving (1901–3)
at a craft school in Vrchlabí,
but soon it became obvious that his talents for painting and
designing called for more intensive training than this school
could offer. For the next 6 years he found himself in Prague, where he studied decorative painting at the School of Applied Arts.
Like Kupka and some other Czech artists of the modern school, Josef Čapek
too found himself in the right place at the right time - the place
being Paris and the time the year 1910. He stayed in Paris
together with his brother for about twelve months, while he studied at
the Académie Colarossi. Both brothers at that time became friends with
the poet Gillaume Apollinaire, who through his essays aty the time
was turning
into a very influential figure, and who was one of the strongest driving forces behind several
streams of modern art, including Cubism. (Karel Čapek later became the Czech translator
of Apollinaire's poetry.) After the brothers' return to Bohemia,
for some time Josef Čapek continued to paint essentially in
the Cubist style, while gradually introducing and modifying Cubism
with some elements of Expressionism and Symbolism, some of which
have become very recognisably his own, like the triangular female
shapes and faces, or faces in the shape of mandorla, also known as
Vesica Pisces (right). |
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| Equally as talented as his brother Karel, and probably even
more versatile, though perhaps never quite so well
known, Josef Čapek has not only been active as a painter, but during the various phases of his life he
had also
been successful as playwright, graphic artist, illustrator, scenic designer,
novelist, writer of children’s books, non-fiction writer,
journalist and art critic; all of these activities being seriously
conceived, not only some side ventures. Several of his works, such as
some stage plays - notably The Insect Play,were written in collaboration with his brother Karel, who
also credits him with inventing the word robot, which had
taken the world by storm, and made Karel Čapek instantly famous, after he
wrote the stage play R.U.R.
In
a humorous little article, Karel Čapek tells the story of how
the word “ROBOT”
was
born.
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Another area of activity in Josef
Čapek's creative life was childrens' books, for which he
wrote the stories as well as drew pictures. Available from Booksplendour
now is the charming book for
primary school age children The Tales of Doggie and Moggie (Povídání
o pejskovi a kočičce). It was prerviously published in
the English language by Methuen as Harum Scarum. The dreadful film of the same
name with Elvis Presley released about the same time in the early
1960s must have swayed the publishers towards using this title,
which has not much to do with the stories. There are nine stories
(Harum Scarum only had eight), about a dog and a cat, who want to
do things the way the humans do, quite inevitably with mixed
success.
The artist's feelings of social consciousness, which were
particularly intensied during the times of world wide economic
crisis in
the early 1930s, are particularly evident in his paintings
"Desire" and "Hard Times" (right).
Later in his artistic life, from about the
late 1920s, Josef Čapek became much influenced by the
Bohemian folk art, which resulted in a series of paintings,
lithographs and pastels inspired by the suburban and country life,
children's plays, etc.
When Czechoslovakia was taken over by the Nazis in 1939, Josef
Čapek, who was very well known for his anti-war stance, was soon arrested (his
brother was already dead by this time). He very nearly survived to
see the end
of the war, but sadly he died in 1945, apparently of pneumonia, only
a few days before the prisoners of
the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were freed by the Allied
Armies. |
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