# Czechoslovak Contemporary Art

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CZECHOSLOVAK CONTEMPORARY ART
Czechoslovak Relief
DEMOTTE GALLERIES, INC. NEW YORK, N. Y.
February 25th to March 12th, 1942
CZECHOSLOVAK CONTEMPORARY ART
(For the benefit of Czechoslovak Relief)
DEMOTTE GALLERIES, INC. 39 EAST 51st STREET NEW YORK, N. Y.
This Exhibit is Under the Auspices of COLONEL VLADIMIR S. HURBAN Czechoslovak Minister to the United States
Honorary Committee
MRS. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT GOVERNOR HERBERT H. LEHMAN MAYOR FIORELLO H. LAGUARDIA DR. WILLIAM JAY SCHIEFFELIN President of American Friends of Czechoslovakia
| MRS. EDWARD C. CARTER MRS. ARTHUR OSGOOD CHOATE MISS MABEL CHOATE MRS. WILLIAM PENN CRESSON MRS. RUSSELL W. DAVENPORT DR. EDGAR J. FISHER MRS. GEORGE FOOTE MRS. JOHN W. FROTHINGHAM MRS. JOHN GREGOR Mr. & MRS. JOHN GREGORY MISS MARION HAGUE MRS. ALFRED HOFFMAN | MRS. JAMES LEES LAIDLAW HENRY SMITH LEIPER MME JARMILA NOVOTNA MRS. EDGERTON PARSONS MRS. WILLIAM R. POPPER MRS. OGDEN REID MRS. WILLIAM JAY SCHIEFFELIN MISS ANN SMITH MRS. LYMAN BEECHER STOWE MRS. ARTHUR HAYS SULZBERGER MRS. ARTHUR W. THOMAS MRS. JINDRICH WALDES |
| MRS. JAMES ROWLAND ANGELL ||
Czechoslovak Relief, Chicago, Ill.
* PROF. J. KUCHYNKAChairman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
* JULIUS HEGERExecutive Secretary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
New York Chapter of Czechoslovak Relief
* MRS MARIA ISSACKSChairman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
* MRS. T. HEJLVice-Chairman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
* MRS. ANNA NOCHTAVice-Chairman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
We wish to express our sincere thanks to the following ladies and gentlemen for lending us their pictures and sculptures: :
| MRS VIOLA W. FANTA MR. J. B. Neumann MR. PAVEL H. SMOLKA | MR. MAURICE STONE MR. PAVEL ULMAN DR. AND MRS. J. A. WINN |
| MR. HUGO POPPY ||
Selection and Arrangement of the Exhibit DR. HUGO FEIGL
​In every country there are certain relics, carefully preserved and shown only on very special occasions, which are held in great veneration because they are the living evidence of that nation's intention to survive in spite of everything. They may be a final message of some small group of patriots telling those who will find their remains that the men and women who lie buried among the ruins died faithful to their trust. Or again they may be a bit of broken pottery, dug out of the shambles of a castle or a city which preferred destruction to surrender. Or the last remnant of a flag that was flown when all had been lost except honor and the loyal devotion to a lost cause.
But there are other evidences of the national will to live which I have nothing to do with an actual clash of arms, yet are as powerful in their testimony to a people's valor and tenacity as the guns that fired the last shot in the struggle for freedom. I refer to those evidences of the national genius which took the shape of paintings, of pieces of sculpture, of musical and literary compositions and which belonging to the realm of the spirit were as indestructable as the laws of God and of nature.
The ancient land of the Czechs, betrayed by those who should have been its friends and protectors, today lies at the mercy of an enemy who for sheer brutality and lust for cruelty has never been quite surpassed within the written annals of history. Death stalks through those streets which were the first to hear the merry strains of Mozart's operas. The melodies arising from the banks of the Vltava river are silenced by the raucous shouts of bands of youthful gangsters, loudly singing the praises of the late and unlamented Horst Wessel, and the silences of the forest calms are broken by the angry staccato of shooting squads, going about their hideous business of exterminating all those who dared question the greatness of the Aryan race as it has revealed itself in the ungainly person of Adolf, son of Alois Schickelgruber, its most conspicuous prophet and illustrious Messiah.
This is a gloomy picture and hardly the sort of thing we like to see printed in our blessed land of wishful thinking in which Candide, amidst the bombs of Pearl Harbor and the flames of the Normandie can still proclaim that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds if one only closes one's eyes against those facts which might have a disturbing effect upon that equanimity of the soul necessary for the enjoyment of a good meal and a pleasant evening at a night club.
​I am writing this however for my good friends, the Czechoslovaks. They will understand, for they have gone through a different kind of schooling. Misfortune has been their constant companion and adversity has been their faithful teacher. They realize that they will never get anything except what they shall be able to acquire by the sweat of their own brow. They do not expect that liberty will come to them neatly done up in a little bundle and with the compliments of a few well-intentioned citizens in a foreign land. They know that freedom without which their nation cannot live, will have to be the result of their own endeavors and having learned from the experience of the past, they understand that the soul of a people is not expressed by vital statistics concerning its balance of trade but that it lies hidden where no one can touch it—in the soul of its artists and writers and philosophers.
The world has long since known about the glories of Czech music. Just as two hundred years ago the name Bach came to stand for that of a musician, so the very word Bohemian had long since become identified with excellence in composition or in the handling of a bow or a pair of vocal cords. And if anyone doubts the good right of the Czech people to learn their language at the knees of their mothers, he only need open his ears. The composers of the old land of Bohemia will tell him so, and in terms that cannot possibly be mistaken.
It had been somewhat different within the realm of the pictorical arts. We were familiar with a few names, but with only a few. For the painter cannot spread his fame as easily as the composer or the singer or the fiddler. A Dvorak or a Smetana can be heard in a thousand different places on one and the same evening. A painter, working for the here and now can only display his genius in a single spot. A private collector may be the proud possessor of one of two Kokoschka's or Stursa's or Maratka's, but no matter how generous he may be in sharing his treasures with his neighbors, only a handful of people at a time can enjoy the sight of these products of the brush and the pencil.
It therefore seems not only a wise but an absolutely necessary decision to bring together into one single space as many of the evidences of the Czech genius for painting as could be found in that rapidly dwindling part of the world as yet unaffected by the defiling touch of the Nazi hand. In the meanwhile, everylthing that can be done should be done, to keep their holy cause before the public at large. For this time, peace will not be entrusted to the sort of men who gave us Ver​sailles. By the time we have gained our victory, the bungling representatives of a bygone system will be raising eggs and will be keeping bees in the porter's lodge of their former country estates. While men and women who really understand the world in which they live will decide upon the fate of a new commonwealth of nations. Admission to this organization will not be based exclusively upon the export of scrap-iron and the number of shoes a single factory can turn out within a single day. The so-called imponderabilia—the non-essentials, so infinitely more important than the essentials, will weigh heavily when the claims of this nation to an independent existence of its own are brought to the attention of the civilized part of mankind.
We already know what the Czechoslovaks could do within the realm of science and of social improvement. We had long since accepted them as among the foremost of our musical benefactors and within these walls the visitor can now make up his mind as to their demand that within the realm of the pictorial arts too, they stand foremost among those who have been striving after an independant and original approach towards the age-old problem of seeing nature through a new and original temperament.
And that is all I have to say upon the subject that brings you here today.
I am among those who have always maintained that art should be "sensed" through the eye or the ear and not through the printed word of a literary commentator. Therefore go into these rooms, most welcome visitor, see for yourself and then make up your mind whether you agree with me that this nation, through its painters just as much as through its other men of genius is entitled to work out its own salvation and to reappear once again and more gloriously then ever before as a Country free and independent!
HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON
THE ALEXANDER PRESS 114–116 WEST 27th STREET
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was legally published within the United States (or the United Nations Headquarters in New York subject to Section 7 of the United States Headquarters Agreement) between 1929 and 1977 (inclusive) without a copyright notice.
The longest-living author of this work died in 2003, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 20 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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