Růžena Zátková

Léon Bakst . "Portrait of the Girl in Blue (Růžena Zátková)", 1914

Růžena Zátková (born March 15, 1885 in Zátkův Mlýn near Březí , † October 29, 1923 in Leysin ) was a Czech painter and sculptor of Futurism .

life and work

1885 to 1915

Her father Vlastimil Zátka was a partner in the Bratři Zátkové company , the largest noodle factory in Austria-Hungary; her mother Karla was a niece of the Czech politician and champion of national revival Karel Havlíček Borovský . As a teenager she moved to Prague with her parents and siblings . Unusually for the turn of the century before last, her progressive parents also attached great importance to the education of their daughters. In addition to his high school education, Zátková received piano lessons and - together with his younger sister Sláva - painting lessons. At first Zátková concentrated on music and even began to give piano concerts. At the same time, however, she made great progress at Antonín Slavíček's private painting school. In 1908 she followed her sister Sláva to continue her painting training in Munich. There she got engaged to the Prussian baron Karl Christian von Loesch without consulting her family. Under pressure from the family, she broke the engagement, but in 1910 married the Russian diplomat Wassili Kwostschinsky, with whom she lived in Rome . In 1912 she gave birth to a daughter. Kwostschinsky, an art connoisseur and collector, supported his wife's artistic ambitions. She turned away from her previous Impressionist style by preoccupation with Russian as well as ancient Egyptian, Byzantine and Italian painting. Zátková was always more interested in the symbolic content of a work of art than in mastery.

One of her closest friends in Rome was the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović , who created a statue after her face and immortalized it in his memoir "Vatra i opekline" (Fire and Fires).

1915 to 1919

In Rome, Růžena Zátková made the acquaintance of many contemporary artists. In 1915 she met the Italian futurist artist Giacomo Balla . Her friends also included Sergei Pavlovich Djagilew , director of the Ballets Russes, and the composer Igor Stravinsky . At the end of 1915, she stayed with the Ballets Russes troupe in Ouchy near Lausanne, Switzerland, where she met the Russian artists Natalija Sergejewna Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov . Both cultivated their individual ideas about painting and avoided joining a group or professing a tendency. This fascinated and influenced Zátková in equal measure. During this time she created paintings influenced by spiritualistic sessions with Balla, the cycle of pictures "Geistesbedingungen", designed costumes for the Ballets Russes and created the sculpture "Ram". With this she deals with the violence, power and dynamics of machines and the mechanized world. The sculpture, of which only photos and drawings have survived, is now considered to be unique to the Czech art of that time and far ahead of it.

Towards the end of the First World War, Zátková fell seriously ill with tuberculosis and stayed in a sanatorium in Leysin , Switzerland, until 1919 . It was there that the picture cycle “The Life of King David” was created, which is characterized by loneliness and the confrontation with one's own mortality.

1919 to 1923

After the war, Růžena Zátková continued to live in the Alps for health reasons, now in the Italian village of Macugnaga. From a distance she carefully observed post-war events and became increasingly politicized in the face of the misery she saw in the Italian villages. She divorced Kwostschinsky and married the left-wing Italian journalist Arturo Cappa. Through his brother-in-law Filippo Tommaso Marinetti , she intensified her contact with the Italian futurists. Marinetti wrote the Futurist Manifesto in 1909 . He, his wife Benedetta and Zátková's long-time friend Balla paved the way for Růžena Zátková to become public. In the spring of 1921, she opened her first solo exhibition in the Giosi Gallery in Rome. Together with the Futurists, she exhibited in Bologna , Turin and Florence in 1922 . Another solo exhibition followed in November 1922 in the Casa d´arte Bragaglia in Rome. She published in futuristic magazines such as "Roma futurista" and "Noi". Marinetti took on the task of making her known in her home country. He enthusiastically praised Zátková's art in Prague in 1921 when he performed his stage works at the Švandovo Divadlo (Švanda Theater), for which Zátková had designed the costumes. The daily newspapers across Europe were now aware of her, and finally the German-language “Prager Tagblatt” wrote about Zátková's exhibitions. Simultaneously with the beginning success, however, Zátková's health deteriorated. She went back to Leysin in Switzerland for treatment, but died there on October 29, 1923 at the age of 38.

Quotes

From a letter from Růžena Zátková to her sister Sláva, 1918: “I follow neither Cézanne nor van Gogh, neither Gauguin, Matisse or Picasso, neither the new nor the old. But I am looking for original truth and belief. My spiritual striving is at the same time artistic striving and more than the spirit I seek art. "

source

• Alena Pomajzlová: Přibĕh malířky Růženy Zátkové (The Story of the Painter Růžena Zátková), published on the occasion of the exhibition about the life and work of Zátková from April 8, 2011 to July 31, 2011 in the Prague Castle conceived by Alena Pomajzlová.

Web links

• Literature and other media by and about Růžena Zátková in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic
• http://www.ruzenazatkova.cz