Jaromír Krejcar

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Jaromír Krejcar (born July 25, 1895 in Hundsheim , Austria-Hungary ; † October 5, 1950 in London ) was a Czechoslovak architect, designer, university professor and architectural theorist. He was heavily involved in the avant-garde movement in Czechoslovakia and was an active member of the avant-garde association Levá fronta . Krejcar was one of the most important exponents of purism and later functionalism in Czechoslovakia.

Life

Jaromír Krejcar, a trained bricklayer, studied at the industrial building school in Prague. Then he worked as a construction manager. From 1918 to 1921 he studied architecture with Jan Kotěra at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague . After two years of working in the studio of the architect Josef Gočár , he started his own business. In the 1920s he joined the avant-garde group Devětsil , in which he was active in the architecture section Architekti Devětsilu (ARDEV, Architects of Devětsil), in the 1930s he became involved in the successor group Levá fronta , in which he was in of the Architektonická sekce Levé fronty section (AsLeF, Architectural Section of the LeF).

In the years 1934/1935 he worked at the State Institute for Urban and Investment Planning GIPROGOR in Moscow. During this stay he had to take note of numerous reports of Stalin's purges; Krejcar, who lived in the Hotel Lux on Gorky Street, noted - even before the actual Great Terror - that numerous roommates were taken away by the NKVD secret police and never returned. The disappointment with the liquidation of the Soviet avant-garde and the direct experience with the Soviet reality caused Krejcar to suddenly leave the Soviet Union.

During the war, Krejcas lived and worked in London. After his return to liberated Czechoslovakia (where he briefly taught at the Technical University of Brno ) and after the Communist takeover in 1948, he emigrated to London for the second time, where he received a professorship at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

Jaromír Krejcar was married three times, his second wife was Milena Jesenská .

Krejcar as an architect

Krejcar is counted among the most important representatives of the functionalist avant-garde in architecture in Czechoslovakia. He became known for his unconventional solutions in the construction of buildings, but he also devoted his time to furniture design and interior architecture. His pavilion, built according to the Soviet formalism on the occasion of the International Exhibition of Art and Technology in Paris in 1937 , is one of the most important testimonies of the Czechoslovak architectural avant-garde.

His work was strongly influenced by Le Corbusier , especially in the early days , and later by Constructivism. The anthology "Život" ("La vie") published by him in 1922 contained many works, including by Le Corbusier himself, which were made available to the public for the first time in Czechoslovakia. As Karel Teige reported later, however, Krejcar considered the orientation towards the models of Soviet constructivism to be evidence of a socialist point of view, while the representatives of Le Corbusier's purism represent capitalist points of view for him.

Krejcar, who was influenced by Bauhaus architecture, took part in the Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar in 1923, and for a while also represented the commercial interests of Bauhaus in Czechoslovakia.

Works (selection)

Building (selection)

  • Villa for Vladislav Vančura , Zbraslav (near Prague), 1923
  • Tenement house in Domažlická ul., Prague, 1923–24 (together with Kamil Roškot)
  • Olympic, commercial, office and tenement house, Spálená 75, Prague, 1924–27
  • Villa, Nad olšinami 4, Prague, 1926
  • Gibián's Villa, Charlese de Gaulla 2, Prague, 1927–29
  • Office building of the self-employed civil servants' corporation, Prague, 1930–31
  • Machnáč Sanatorium, Trenčianske Teplice , 1929–32
  • Strakonice regulatory plan , 1930
  • Project of the reconstruction of the transport network in Prague, 1931 (together with J. Špalek)
  • Czechoslovak Pavilion, International Exhibition of Art and Technology 1937, Paris

Publications (selection)

  • Publication of the anthology "Život" (No. 2 of the anthology of the same name) with material on purism and constructivism, etc. a. with texts by Le Corbusier, Výtvarný odbor umělecké besedy, Prague 1922, 226 pages
  • L'architecture contemporaine en Tchécoslovaquie, Orbis, Prague 1928
  • Jaromír Krejcar: Competition draft for Parliament building, Prague 1928

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jaromír Krejcar , short résumé in the online encyclopedia of the Encyklopedie dějin města Brna , online at: encyklopedie.brna.cz / ...
  2. ↑ a b c Kamil Dvořák: Jaromír Krejcar Curriculum Vitae of the archiweb.cz portal, online at: archiweb.cz / ...
  3. ↑ Joseph Pechar: Československá architektura. Prague 1979, p. 27 note 63 or p. 12 note 2, quoted in after: Michael Bartůšek: Ohlasy sovětské avantgardní architektury v české architektuře 20. – 30. let. P. 26ff., Prague 2010, online at: dspace.cuni.cz / ...
  4. ↑ a b Rostislav Švácha: Sovětský constructivism a česká architektura. In: Umění. (Journal of the Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic), year 1988 [No. 1], cit. after: Michael Bartůšek: Ohlasy sovětské avantgardní architektury v české architektuře 20. – 30. let , Prague 2010, online at: dspace.cuni.cz/ , here page 34
  5. ↑ Rostislav Švácha (ed.): Jaromír Krejcar 1895 až 1949 (exhibition catalog), Prague 1995, cited above. after: Michael Bartůšek: Ohlasy sovětské avantgardní architektury v české architektuře 20. – 30. let , Prague 2010, online at: dspace.cuni.cz/ , here page 34
  6. ^ Derek Sayer: The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History. Princeton University Press, Princeton (New Yersey) 2000, ISBN 0-691-05760-5 , p. 212, online at: books.google.de / ...
  7. ↑ a b Friedrich Czagan: Frank Kupka and the Czech avant-garde. in: Das Werk: Architektur und Kunst, 7/1966, online (digitized) at: e-periodica.ch / ... p. 278; the digitized anthology itself can be found online at: bibliothequekandinsky.centrepompidou.fr/
  8. ↑ Krejcar, Jaromír (1895–1949), architect , online at: biographien.ac.at/oebl / ...
  9. ↑ Karel Teige: Sovětská architektura. Prague 1936, quoted after: Michael Bartůšek: Ohlasy sovětské avantgardní architektury v české architektuře 20. – 30. let , Prague 2010, online at: dspace.cuni.cz/
  10. ^ Derek Sayer: Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-691-04380-7 , pp. 146f., Online at: books.google.de / ...
  11. ↑ The old days. Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar , online at: baunetz.de / ...
  12. ↑ Kamila Petrášová: Škola Bauhausu nás inspiruje dodnes. Report of the Agency for Basic Research of the Czech Republic, online at: gacr.cz / ...
personal data
SURNAME Krejcar, Jaromír
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czechoslovak architect, designer, university professor and architectural theorist
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Hundsheim
DATE OF DEATH 5th October 1950
Place of death London