Intergenerational Dialogues inside the Group of Surrealists in Czechoslovakia

• In Event: Reframing Interwar Legacies: The Politics of Memory in Central and Eastern European Art

Abstract

After the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, the Czechoslovak Surrealist group, working illegally, emerged from underground. The group launched a series of interpretive games, aligning themselves with the first generation of Czechoslovak Surrealists. For example, in the play Enigma Š + T, the authors reinterpreted, both visually and verbally, Toyen’s painting Po představení (After the Performance; 1943) and Štyrský’s painting Majakovského vesta (Mayakovsky’s Waistcoat; 1939), or Eva Švankmajerová reactualised Toyen´s painting War. Field Scarecrow (1945) reacting to it by her paintings Before the War (1995) and After the War (1995). The paper will analyse these intergenerational dialogues and explore the political and historical resonance of the memory of the first Surrealist group in the work of the new generation.

Author

• Anna Pravdová, National Gallery Prague (Czech Republic)