Josef Váchal

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Half- length portrait ( Prášily )
monument
Façade decorations based on Váchal's graphics in Josef Váchal Street in Litomyšl

Josef Váchal (born September 23, 1884 in Milavče , † May 10, 1969 in Studeňany ) was a Czech writer, painter, graphic artist and printer, inventor of new techniques of color woodcut.

Life

Váchal was the illegitimate son of Josef Aleš-Lyžec and Anna Váchalová. He was raised by his grandparents, Jan Aleš and Jana Alešová, in Písek . Here he attended high school, from which he left without a degree. In 1898 Váchal moved to Prague , where he trained as a bookbinder and became friends with his father's cousin, the painter Mikoláš Aleš . He recommended him to the painting school of Alois Kalvoda , which Váchal attended in 1904.

Since 1903 Váchal was in theosophical and spiritualist circles around Karl Weinfurter , but took them with humor. He also dealt with Satanism and at the same time with biology and took part in projects by Edward Babák , for example in his documentary Život mrtvé žáby ( The life of the dead frog , Austria-Hungary 1912). In 1908 he bought his first printing press with the inheritance of his late grandmother and worked with the Catholic review Meditace (Meditation) published by Emil Pacovský. In 1911 he participated in the founding of the Sursum artist group, which was influenced by symbolism and Catholic mysticism (well-known members were Jan Zrzavý and Jan Konůpek ), which only existed until 1912. Váchal's short but intense friendship with the writer Jakub Deml also fell during the same period . Since the dissolution of the Sursum group , Váchal was a loner and had to do without the support of important art critics.

In 1913 Váchal married Marie Pešulová. From 1916 to 1918 he served on the Italian front and painted a church on the Isonzo . After the First World War, he became involved in social democracy, but could not cope with its nature as a mass movement. In 1922 his wife Marie died after a long lung disease, for which he blamed himself, since he had a passionate affair with his (almost same age) student, the graphic artist Anna Macková, since 1920. Macková and Váchal never married, but remained a couple until their almost simultaneous death.

Váchal's most productive phase was the 1920s and 1930s, when he, with financial support from Anna Macková, created ever more complex bibliophile prints in ever smaller print runs and had enough regular buyers to be able to sell these extremely expensive books. These customers included the civil servant from Litomyšl Josef Portman, whose dream was to found a museum for Váchal and who therefore gradually let Váchal design his entire house (see below). In 1927 Váchal took part in an international exhibition in Leipzig, in 1928 in the Pressa in Cologne and in the same year received an award at the Florence Book Fair. Inspired by these successes, Váchal bought new printing presses and gradually prepared for a series of large solo exhibitions in Czechoslovakia that were to help him achieve his breakthrough. The exhibitions in Prague, Brno and Hradec Králové were a flop without the support of art critics. Váchal was financially exhausted, had to sell his machines and, extremely bitter and hateful, withdrew with Anna Macková to her parents' farm in the village of Studeňany west of Valdice .

The farm was expropriated as part of the forced collectivizations after the Second World War. Váchal and Macková only had a small hand press available, Váchal was given a former storage room as an apartment. He wrote handwritten novels, which he mailed to his friends as thanks for donating food. It is thanks to Váchal's exile in the insignificant Studeňany that he survived both the war and the Stalinist show trials of the post-war period unnoticed. He was a strict anti-communist and anti-nationalist and, out of anger against the Czechoslovak society, who opposed him, had conjured up Satan during the war years and asked him for revenge: he saw Adolf Hitler in this conjured Satan .

During the political opening of the 1960s, interest in Váchal increased and Anna Macková organized small exhibitions for him. One day after Anna's death and five days before his own death, he was named "Honored Artist" ("Zasloužilý umělec") by the Czechoslovak government on his deathbed on May 5, 1969 for his life's work. That was a rather low honorary title without financial security, which was overshadowed by the high distinction as a people 's artist . The award was significant for Váchal's aftermath, however, insofar as it enabled his work The Bloody Novel to be published in 1970 , through which he became known in the wider society (see below below).

Váchal was buried in the village of Radim near Jičín in Eastern Bohemia.

Classification of Váchal's work

In terms of book production alone (whether printed or handwritten), Váchal left behind over 300 very different works. He also worked as a printer of bookplates , as a painter and sculptor. In any case, his passion was primarily letterpress and woodcut. With the help of old manuals and his own experience, he perfected old woodcut techniques and invented new ones, including a process of impregnating the printing block , which makes the wood differently absorbent in different places and thus allows countless shades of color. Váchal also experimented with printing blocks made of different materials and built himself various tools that resembled dental drills. Váchal demonstrated his techniques, such as adapting photographs to graphics, in his most monumental collection of large-format woodblock prints, the Bohemian Forest, dying and romantic ( Šumava umírající a romantická , 1931). He detailed his techniques in the recipe book of the color woodcut ( Receptář barevného dřevorytu , 1934). An important source for this detailed work was a handwritten manual from an Austrian printing workshop, which he burned in his bitterness in 1952 because he found that humanity was not worth getting his hands on something so valuable. From the second half of the 1920s he also cut and cast his own letters. For his first books, he also carved the text into wooden panels in a medieval way.

While both the Czech artistic avant-garde and the mainstream had been inspired by French art since the beginning of the 20th century, Váchal exposed these efforts early on as a crude attempt to create a national art based on the model of distant foreign countries in order to keep away from To resolve the influence of the Central European, German-speaking neighbors and Austria-Hungary. He was skeptical about mass movements and fashions and, probably as the only Czech artist of the time, continued to orientate himself towards Austria and Germany.

As for his style, a particular eclecticism can be seen in Váchal . For example, he painted the devil in a cubist manner , and he used abstract compositions (comparable to František Kupka , for example ) when he processed the impressions of his biological research and microscopy. And in his obituary for his wife Marie, he anticipated Pop Art by filling the entire volume In memoriam Marie Váchalové ( In memoriam M. Váchalová , 1923) with reproductions of her face on her deathbed, each wrapped in a different aura are. He illustrated the Bloody Novel ( Krvavý román , 1924) in an expressionist way, because he thought that the illustrations of the old Kolporta novels anticipated Expressionism. Váchal did not simply imitate fashions, but adapted and developed different styles, depending on the content he wanted to express.

Váchal's work is paradoxical insofar as, with all its perfectionism, he also admired supposedly low genres such as the grocer's song or the Kolportage novel and also saw their "errors" and inaccuracies as a source of inspiration for symbolic associations. The result was that he printed extremely expensive bibliophile editions, which, however, had to appear to his contemporaries in part like backward-looking imitations of cheap junk.

Aftermath and The Bloody Novel

With the publication of Váchal's work The Bloody Novel ( Krvavý román , 1924) as a censored facsimile in 1970, Váchal became known to a wider public. However, it happened after the crackdown on the Prague Spring by the Soviet Union, during the period of extreme political repression, and the book was banned again immediately. This work had such an impact on a group of students that they founded a society for the study of this novel, the Societas contraaloholica Doctoris Řimsae , named after one of the main characters in the novel, the anti-alcoholic Dr. Řimsa, which is based on the real person Jan Šimsa. After the fall of the Wall in 1989, the members of this society, including Ladislav Horáček, founded the Paseka publishing house , which is also named after a character from the Bloody Novel , an alter ego of Váchal. The first publication by this publisher was The Bloody Novel Váchals in 1990, which immediately became a bestseller. The Paseka publishing house then bought the now dilapidated house of the Váchal collector Josef Portman in Litomyšl, which Váchal had completely decorated with wall paintings, and restored it. In 1993 this house, intended by Josef Portman in the 1920s as the Váchal Museum, was opened under the name Portmoneum (again based on the model of the Bloody Novel ).

The bloody novel was filmed twice. First directed by Ladislav Horáček as an amateur film during the 1980s and 1990s, then professionally by Jaroslav Brabec (1993). In Litomyšl an alley was named after Váchal, and its house facades were decorated with enlargements of the illustrations for the Bloody Novel .

Over the years Váchal was rediscovered, there were numerous publications on his life, his diaries and memories, which offer a lot of information about the occult scene around 1910, were edited. Gradually his books are being published as facsimiles. In 2014, two large exhibitions, curated by Marie Rakušanová, took place simultaneously in Pilsen and Prague, which were devoted to Váchal's artistic (Pilsen) and letterpress (Prague) work. Both exhibitions were supplemented by large-scale monographs by Marie Rakušanová.

Váchal's most popular work The Bloody Novel has now been translated into Russian (2005), French (2007) and German (2019). The German translation by Ondřej Cikán contains the novel's very first detailed commentary on literary and autobiographical allusions, on realities and on hidden content and graphic punchlines.

Works in book form (selection)

  • Vidění sedmera dnů a planet etc. [ Vision of seven days and planets etc. ], 1910, 50 pieces.
  • Přepěkné čtenj o gasnowidném Wawřincovi etc. [ Wonderful reading about the clairvoyant Laurentius etc. ], 1910, 100 pieces; 1916, 1921, 1922 one piece each.
  • Pjseň strašlivá o bezpříkladném mravů zplundrování etc. [A terrible song about the unprecedented corruption of customs etc. ], 1913, 10 pieces.
  • Mystikové a vizionáři etc. [ mystics and visionaries etc. ], 1913, 50 pieces.
  • Nový pekelný žaltář etc. [ The New Hell Psalter etc. ], 1913, 100 pieces.
  • Paměti etc. [ memories etc. ], 1903–1916, handwritten 1 piece.
  • Paměti pro Josefa Portmana [ Memories for Josef Portman ], 1919–1920, handwritten 1 piece.
  • Dokonalá magie budoucnosti etc. [ Perfect Magic of the Future etc. ], 1922, 18 pieces.
  • Mystika čichu [ mysticism of the sense of smell ], 1920, 10 pieces; 1922, 1 piece.
  • Nový kalendář tolerancý etc. [ New calendar of tolerances etc. ], 1922, 25 pieces.
  • In memoriam Marie Váchalové etc. [ In memoriam Marie Váchalová etc. ], 1923, 25 pieces, 8 of them complete.
  • Ďáblova zahrádka aneb Přírodopis strašidel etc. [ the devil's garden or ghost certificate etc. ], 1924, 17 pieces.
  • Krvavý román [ The Bloody Novel ], 1924, 17 copies.
  • Koruna bludařstva to jest: Postyla Kacířská [ crown of misbelief , that is: The heretic postil ], 1926, 16 pieces.
  • Mor v Korčule [ Plague on Korčula ], 1927, 18 pieces.
  • Malíř na frontě. Soča a Italie 1917-18 [ painters at the front. Isonzo and Italy 1917-18 ], 1929, 457 pieces.
  • Šumava umírající a romantická [ Bohemian Forest dying and romantic ], 1931, 11 pieces.
  • Orbis pictus etc. , 1932, 25 pieces.
  • Christian Heinrich Spieß , 1933, 15 pieces.
  • Receptář barevného dřevorytu [ Color woodcut recipe book ], 1934, 7 copies.
  • Fragonard Paseka, zčeštil Mistr Vršovický, Josefa Váchala Krvavý román etc. [ Fragonard Paseka, translated by master from Werschowitz: Josef Váchals bloody novel etc. ], 1935, handwritten 1 piece.
  • Tajnosti sanatoria etc. [ Mysteries of the Sanatorium etc. ], 1940–1943, handwritten 1 piece.
  • Pekla zplozenec etc. [ Ausgeburt der Hell etc. ], 1948, handwritten 1 piece.
  • Robinson mohelnský [ Robinson from Mohelno ], 1955, handwritten 1 piece.
  • Živant a umrlanti [ The bon vivant and the undead ], 1956, handwritten 1 piece.
  • Čarodějnice holešovická neboli Vězeň v bolševickém hradě [ The Witch of Holešovice or The Prisoner in the Bolshevik Castle ], 1959, handwritten 1 piece.

Posthumous new editions, often as facsimile (selection)

  • Krvavý román [ The Bloody Novel ], Hradec Králové censored 1970; Prague 1990; Prague 2011.
  • Nový kalendář tolerancý etc. [ New calendar of tolerances etc. ], Vienna 1984; Prague private 1985; Prague 1990.
  • Orbis pictus etc. [ Orbis pictus etc. ], Prague private 1985; Prague 1991.
  • Přepěkné čtenj o gasnowidném Wawřincovi etc. [ Wonderful reading about the clairvoyant Laurentius etc. ], Prague 1991.
  • Ďáblova zahrádka aneb Přírodopis strašidel etc. [ the devil's garden or ghost certificate etc. ], Prague 1992; Litomyšl 2011.
  • Nový pekelný žaltář etc. [ The New Psalter of Hell etc. ], Prague 1992.
  • Paměti [ Memories ], ed. by Milan Drápala, Prague 1995.
  • Živant a umrlanti [ The bon vivant and the undead ], ed. by Blanka Stehlíková, Prague / Litomyšl 1995.
  • Malíř na frontě etc. [ painters at the front etc. ], Prague / Litomyšl 1996.
  • Dokonalá magie budoucnosti etc. [ Perfect Magic of the Future etc. ], Prague 1997.
  • Deníky. Výbor z let 1922–1964 [ Diaries, selection from the years 1922–1964 ], ed. by Jiří Olič, Prague 1998.
  • Vidění sedmera dnů a planet etc. [ Vision of seven days and planets etc. ], Prague 1998.
  • Mystika čichu [ Mysticism of the Sense of Smell ], Prague / Litomyšl 1999 and 2008.
  • Šumava umírající a romantická [ Bohemian Forest dying and romantic ], České Budějovice 2007; Prague / Litomyšl 2008 with a special edition in original size.
  • Vážený pane Tři B! Vzájemná korespondence Josefa Váchala a Bedřicha Beneše Buchlovana [ Dear Mr. Drei B! Correspondence with Bedřich Beneš Buchlovan ], ed. by Zuzana Zadrobílková, Prague 2009.
  • In memoriam Marie Váchalové [ In memoriam Marie Váchalová ], Prague / Litomyšl 2014.
  • Paměti pro Josefa Portmana [ Memories for Josef Portman ], ed. by Zuzana Zadrobílková, Prague 2014.
  • Až do hrobu tmavýho [ To the dark grave - correspondence with Josef Hodek], ed. by Hana Klínková, Prague 2014.

translation to German

  • The bloody novel - attempt at the type of the ideal trash novel , trans. and commented by Ondřej Cikán, Vienna / Prague 2019.

Literature on Josef Váchal

  • Ajvaz, Michal: VÁCHAL , Prague 1994.
  • Bajerová, Marie: O Josefu Váchalovi [ About JV ], Prague 1991.
  • Cikán, Ondřej: Afterword and commentary on Josef Váchal: The bloody novel etc. , Vienna / Prague 2019.
  • Galmiche, Xavier (ed.): Facétie et illumination, l'oeuvre de Josef Váchal, un graveur écrivain de Bohême (1884-1969) , Paris / Prague 1999.
  • Hruška, Petr: Josef Váchal - Exlibris a jejich adresáti [ JV - Exlibris and their addressees ], Prague 2016.
  • Jirmusová Lazarowitz, Hana (Czech, German, English): Josef Váchal , Český Krumlov 2015.
  • Kaše, Jiří / Kruis, Ivan (eds.): Portmoneum, Muzeum Josefa Váchala, Litomyšl [ Portmoneum, Museum J. Váchals, L. ], Prague / Litomyšl 1993.
  • Kaše, Jiří u. a. (Eng.): Purseum. Josef Váchal museum in Litomyšl , Prague / Litomyšl 2003.
  • Klínková, Hana: Kniha vzpomínek [ Book of Memories ], Řevnice 2016.
  • Kroutvor, Josef : Šumava a Josef Váchal [The Bohemian Forest and Josef Váchal], Prague 1994.
  • Olič, Jiří: Nejlépe tlačiti vlastní káru sám [ It's best to push your cart alone ], Prague 1993.
  • Pořízková, Lenka: Societas contraalcoholica doctoris Řimsae , Prague 2012.
  • Rakušanová, Marie (German): Josef Váchal. Subversives, craftsmen and magicians on art , in: Umění / Art 60, 2012, pp. 478–514. online .
  • Rakušanová, Marie: Josef Váchal. Napsal, vyryl, vytiskl a svázal [ text, woodcuts, printing and binding by ... ], Plzeň 2014.
  • Rakušanová, Marie: Josef Váchal. Magic hledání [ magic of searching ], Prague 2014a.
  • Rakušanová, Marie / Sommer, Lothar / Vargová Pavla (Ger.): Legend Josef Váchal , Řevnice 2014b.

Web links

Commons : Josef Váchal  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Cikán 2019, p. 323.
  2. ↑ Rakušanová 2012, p. 505; Rakušanová, Plzeň 2014, pp. 33–46.
  3. ↑ Rakušanová, Plzeň 2014, pp. 208–210.
  4. ↑ Cikán 2019 pp. 310-311; Rakušanová 2012 p. 485.
  5. ↑ Cikán 2019 p. 313; Rakušanvá 2012 p. 487; Rakušanová, Plzeň 2014, pp. 15 and 334–336.
  6. ↑ Rakušanová, Plzeň 2014, pp. 180–185.
  7. ↑ Cikán 2019 pp. 315-317.
  8. ↑ Cikán 2019 pp. 318-320.
  9. ↑ Cikán 2019 pp. 321–322.
  10. ↑ Bibliography in Rakušanová, Plzeň 2014, pp. 425–471.
  11. ↑ Rakušanová, Plzeň 2014, pp. 292–310; See images on www.vachal.cz z. B. here and here .
  12. ↑ Rakušanová 2012, pp. 486–489.
  13. ↑ Rakušanová 2012, p. 490; Cikán 2019 pp. 321–322.
  14. ↑ Cikán 2019 pp. 318 and 333.
  15. ↑ Rakušanová 2012 pp. 480–481.
  16. ↑ Rakušanová, Plzeň 2014, pp. 241–243; see. Image on www.esbirky.cz
  17. ↑ Rakušanová, Plzeň 2014, pp. 208–214; see. Image on www.vachal.cz
  18. ↑ Rakušanová, Plzeň 2014, pp. 72–73; see. Image on www.vachal.cz .
  19. ↑ Cikán 2019, pp. 333–334; see. Images on www.váchal.cz
  20. ↑ Rakušanová, Plzeň 2014, pp. 356–367; Cikán 2019, pp. 339–341.
  21. ↑ Pořízková 2012.
  22. ↑ http://en.ghmp.cz/josef-vachal-magie-hledani/ and http://www.zpc-galerie.cz/cs/josef-vachal-napsal-vyryl-vytiskl-svazal-223 .
personal data
SURNAME Váchal, Josef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Josef Vachal
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech writer, painter, graphic artist and printer
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Milavče
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 1969
Place of death Studeňany