Emil Filla (4 April 1882 – 7 October 1953) was a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

painter. He was a leader of the

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

between World War I and World War II and was an early Cubist painter.

Early life

Filla was born in

Chropyně Chropyně () is a town in Kroměříž District in the Zlín Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 4,600 inhabitants. Administrative division Chropyně consists of two municipal parts (in brackets population according to the 2021 census): *Ch ...

Moravia Moravia ( ; ) is a historical region in the eastern Czech Republic, roughly encompassing its territory within the Danube River's drainage basin. It is one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. The medieval and early ...

, and spent his childhood in

Brno Brno ( , ; ) is a Statutory city (Czech Republic), city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava (river), Svitava and Svratka (river), Svratka rivers, Brno has about 403,000 inhabitants, making ...

, but later moved to Prague. Beginning in 1903, he studied at ( Academy of Fine Arts, Prague), but he left the school in 1906.

Painting

Filla was a member of the group Osma (The Eight) in 1907–1908, which had commonalities with the Fauves and also had direct ties to the German Expressionist group

Die Brücke Die Brücke (The Bridge), also known as Künstlergruppe Brücke or KG Brücke, was a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905. The founding members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Karl Schmidt-R ...

. Important works by Filla from this period include ''Reader of Dostoevsky'' (1907) and ''Chess Players'' (1908). In 1909, he became a member of the Mánes Union of Fine Arts. Beginning in 1910 he painted primarily in a Cubist style, strongly influenced by

Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

and Braque, and produced works such as ''Salome'' (1911) and ''Bathers'' (1912). He also began to paint many

still life A still life (: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, human-m ...

s around that time. In 1911, he edited several issues of ''Volné směry'', promoting Cubism and publishing reproductions of works by Picasso. After both readers and the leaders of Mánes reacted negatively, he and others withdrew from Mánes and founded ''Skupina výtvarných umělců'' (Group of Visual Artists), which was a Cubist-oriented group. Around 1913, he and Otto Gutfreund, produced some of the earliest Cubist sculpture made anywhere. Before World War I he moved to Paris, but left for the Netherlands when war broke out. He returned to Prague after the war. During the 1920s, he further developed his version of Synthetic Cubism and rejoined Mánes. Like many Czech modernists, he was active in design as well as in painting; in 1925 he designed paintings on glass for the Czechoslovak Pavilion at the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris. In the late 1920s and early 1930s,

Surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

influence also began to show in his painting and sculpture, and he was a participant in Poesie 1932, an international exhibition in Prague that introduced Surrealism to the Czech public. He did not, however, become a Surrealist. His works have been compiled by Vojtěch Lahoda in a catalogue raisonne published in 2007 by Academia press in Prague.

1939–1953

On the first day of World War II he was arrested by the

gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

for his anti-Nazi activism together with painter Josef Čapek and others and was subsequently imprisoned in German

concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...

s Dachau and

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (Old Reich) territori ...

. However, he survived, returned home and began to teach at the Vysoká škola uměleckoprůmyslová v Praze (VŠUP—Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague). Filla's teachings at the Academy ensure the continuance of Czech Cubism, and his influence is notable in the works of his pupil Milos Reindl amongst others. In 1945, he was the first artist to be given a post-war exhibition at Mánes. After the war, he exhibited mainly works from the cycle ''Boje a zápasy'' (Fights and Struggles), and later mainly produced landscapes. During his lifetime he was active as a painter, sculptor, collector, theoretician, editor, organizer, and diplomat. From 1947 to 1952, he lived and worked in the castle in Peruc. In the southern wing of the castle, where he lived, today there is a memorial hall with his paintings. He died on 7 October 1953 in Prague and is buried in Střešovice district of Prague. He idolized

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks ...

, Pierre Bonnard and

Edvard Munch Edvard Munch ( ; ; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter. His 1893 work ''The Scream'' has become one of Western art's most acclaimed images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inher ...

as well as

and Braque.

Monetary valuation

His painting "sculptress in the studio" was sold by Sotheby's on 13 June 2011 for 623,650 GBP and "seated woman" was sold on 14 November 2017 for 729,000 GBP. This is the highest recorded price paid for a painting by Filla.

References

External links