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Adolf Hoffmeister
Adolf Hoffmeister (15 August 1902 – 24 July 1973) was a Czechoslovak illustrator, caricaturist, painter, writer, poet, journalist, politician, diplomat and traveler. Life and career Early life He was born in Prague, to the family of a Prague lawyer. He grew up in a cultivated intellectual environment, his uncle was the composer and educator Karel Hoffmeister. In the years 1912–1921, he studied at the Real Gymnasium school in Křemencova Street in Prague, where most of the future members of the avant-garde group Devětsil met. When Devětsil was founded on October 5, 1920, Adolf Hoffmeister became its youngest member and at the same time an executive. After graduating, he continued his studies at the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague, which he completed in 1925 by obtaining a doctorate. In the summer semester of 1924 he studied Egyptology at the University of Cambridge. From 1917 he started writing poems, which he first published in magazines under variou ...
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Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate climate, temperate oceanic climate, with relatively warm summers and chilly winters. Prague is a political, cultural, and economic hub of central Europe, with a rich history and Romanesque architecture, Romanesque, Czech Gothic architecture, Gothic, Czech Renaissance architecture, Renaissance and Czech Baroque architecture, Baroque architectures. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia and residence of several Holy Roman Emperors, most notably Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV (r. 1346–1378). It was an important city to the Habsburg monarchy and Austro-Hungarian Empire. The city played major roles in the Bohemian Reformation, Bohemian and the Protestant Reformations, the Thirty Year ...
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Jaroslav Ježek (composer)
Jaroslav Ježek () (September 25, 1906 – January 1, 1942) was a Czechoslovakian composer, pianist and conductor, author of jazz, classical, incidental, and film music. Life Ježek was born in the Prague quarter of Žižkov to the family of a tailor. He was almost blind from a young age. He studied composition at the Prague Conservatory as a pupil of Karel Boleslav Jirák (1924–1927), at the master school of composition with Josef Suk (1927–1930), and shortly also with Alois Hába (1927–1928). Ježek met the playwrights/comedians Jan Werich and Jiří Voskovec (aka George Voskovec), leaders of the ''Osvobozené divadlo'' (Prague Liberated Theatre) in Prague, and took up the post of main composer and conductor for the theatre. During the next decade (from 1928 to 1939), he composed incidental music, songs, dances, and ballets for the comic and satirical plays of Voskovec and Werich. In 1934 he became a member of Czech Group of Surrealists. Forced to leave Czechoslo ...
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Paul Valéry
Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry (; 30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945) was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues), his interests included aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events. Valéry was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 12 different years. Biography Valéry was born to a Corsican father and Genoese-Istrian mother in Sète, a town on the Mediterranean coast of the Hérault, but he was raised in Montpellier, a larger urban center close by. After a traditional Roman Catholic education, he studied law at university and then resided in Paris for most of the remainder of his life, where he was, for a while, part of the circle of Stéphane Mallarmé. In 1900, he married Jeannine Gobillard, a friend of Stéphane Mallarmé's family, who was also a niece of the painter Berthe Morisot. The wedding was a double ceremony in which the bride's cousin, Berthe Morisot's daughter, Julie M ...
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André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars. The author of more than fifty books, at the time of his death his obituary in ''The New York Times'' described him as "France's greatest contemporary man of letters" and "judged the greatest French writer of this century by the literary cognoscenti." Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposed to public view the conflict and eventual reconciliation of the two sides of his personality (characterized by a Protestant austerity and a transgressive sexual adventurousness, respectively), which a strict and moralistic education had helped set at odds. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritanical constraints, and centers o ...
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Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades, and he designed buildings in Europe, Japan, India, and North and South America. Dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities, Le Corbusier was influential in urban planning, and was a founding member of the (CIAM). Le Corbusier prepared the master plan for the city of Chandigarh in India, and contributed specific designs for several buildings there, especially the government buildings. On 17 July 2016, seventeen projects by Le Corbusier in seven countries were inscribed in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites as The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, an Outstanding Co ...
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James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel '' Ulysses'' (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's ''Odyssey'' are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection '' Dubliners'' (1914), and the novels '' A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' (1916) and '' Finnegans Wake'' (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism. Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. He attended the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, then, briefly, the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School. Despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances, he excelled at the Jes ...
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Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara (; ; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; – 25 December 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement. Under the influence of Adrian Maniu, the adolescent Tzara became interested in Symbolism and co-founded the magazine ''Simbolul'' with Ion Vinea (with whom he also wrote experimental poetry) and painter Marcel Janco. During World War I, after briefly collaborating on Vinea's '' Chemarea'', he joined Janco in Switzerland. There, Tzara's shows at the Cabaret Voltaire and Zunfthaus zur Waag, as well as his poetry and art manifestos, became a main feature of early Dadaism. His work represented Dada's nihilistic side, in contrast with the more moderate approach favored by Hugo Ball. After moving to Paris in ...
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Otakar Storch-Marien
Otakar is a masculine Czech given name of Germanic origin (cf. Audovacar). Notable people with the name include: *Otakar Batlička (1895–1942), Czech adventurer, journalist, ham radio operator, member of Czech Nazi resistance group in World War II * Otakar Borůvka (1899–1995), Czech mathematician best known today for his work in graph theory * Otakar Bystřina (1861–1931), pen name for a Czech writer who was a subject of Austria for much of his life * Otakar Hemele (1926–2001), Czech football player, who was a devoted player of Slavia Prague * Otakar Hollmann (1894–1967), Czech pianist who was notable in the repertoire for left-handed pianists * Otakar Hořínek (1929–2015), Czech sport shooter * Otakar Hostinský (1847–1910), Czech historian, musicologist, and professor of musical aesthetics * Otakar Janecký (born 1960), retired Czech ice hockey forward *Otakar Jaroš (1912–1943), Czech officer in the Czechoslovak forces in the Soviet Union *Otakar Jeremiáš (189 ...
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Left Front (Czechoslovakia)
The Left Front ( cz, Levá fronta) was an organization of left-wing intellectuals in Czechoslovakia, founded in 1929 on the initiative of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. History Formed in 1930, which saw itself as the successor to the ''Devětsil Union of Modern Culture.'' The founding date was on October 18, 1929. On this day a general meeting of mainly members of Devětsil took place, in which some basic documents such as the programmatic statement of the new association were approved. The founding members were Karel Teige, Stanislav Kostka Neumann, Vítězslav Nezval, Bedřich Václavek, E.F. Burian, Vilém Závada, František Halas, Julius Fučík and later joined by Vladislav Vančura, Ivan Sekanina, Ladislav Štoll and others. The chairman of the newly found organisation became Zdeněk Nejedlý in 1932. The chosen name ''Levá fronta'' was a reference to the LEF in the Soviet Union. The group was founded relatively quickly in other cities, first in Brno initi ...
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PEN International
PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous International PEN centers in over 100 countries. Other goals included: to emphasise the role of literature in the development of mutual understanding and world culture; to fight for freedom of expression; and to act as a powerful voice on behalf of writers harassed, imprisoned and sometimes killed for their views. History The first PEN Club was founded at the Florence Restaurant in London on October 5, 1921, by Catherine Amy Dawson Scott, with John Galsworthy as its first president. Its first members included Joseph Conrad, Elizabeth Craig, George Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells. PEN originally stood for "Poets, Essayists, Novelists", but now stands for "Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, Novelists", and includes writers of any form of litera ...
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Jan Werich
Jan Werich (; 6 February 1905 – 31 October 1980) was a Czech actor, playwright and writer. Early life Between 1916 and 1924, Werich attended "reálné gymnasium" (equivalent to high school) in Křemencova Street in Prague (where his future business partner, Jiří Voskovec, also studied). He studied law at the Charles University Law School from 1924 to 1927, from which he made an early departure to begin his artistic career and forge one of the most important partnerships of his life. Career Theater His collaboration with Jiří Voskovec and Jaroslav Ježek lasted for more than 10 years. Their partnership was a platform for their numerous left-wing political satires, most notably in the Osvobozené divadlo (Liberated Theatre). The trio's work took inspiration from Dada, with its love of the absurd, a reaction against bourgeois values and the horrors of World War I. In the years leading up to World War II and the closure of Czechoslovak theatres, Werich, Voskovec and Jež ...
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George Voskovec
Jiří Voskovec (), born Jiří Wachsmann and known in the United States as George Voskovec (June 19, 1905 – July 1, 1981) was a Czech actor, writer, dramatist, and director who became an American citizen in 1955. Throughout much of his career he was associated with actor and playwright Jan Werich. In the U.S., he is best known for his role as the polite Juror #11 in the 1957 film ''12 Angry Men''. Life and career Voskovec was born as Jiří Wachsmann in Sázava in Bohemia to Jiřina Valentina Marie ( Pinkasová; 1867-1939) and Václav Vilém Eduard ( Voskovec; later Wachsmann; 1864-1945). He had two siblings, Mrs. Olga Adriena Kluckaufová and Dr. Prokop Voskovec. His granduncle was Bedřich Wachsmann and his cousin was Alois Wachsman, both painters and architects. Another uncle was Austrian painter Julius Wachsmann (1866–1936). He immigrated to the US in 1939 and again in 1948 with the onset of the National Socialist and Stalinist regimes, respectively, in Czechoslovak ...
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