Abstrakt
Why are you conspiring with us if you won't stick with us to the end? (J. W.
Goethe). Artistic and political involvement of the Czech pre-war avant-garde (1948-1955).
The incompatibility of the principles of modern or avant-garde art with totalitarian propaganda can be symbolically demonstrated by the Stalin monument in Prague. Unlike the fascism-affected personalities of the Czech avant-garde, who again became the target of liquidating criticism after the 1948 communist coup, their peer and friend, sculptor Otakar Švec, took part in the competition for the monstrous Stalin monument in Prague in 1949.
Before the war, he was one of the usual realistic sculptors, but he deviated from his personal level several times with interesting modernist stylisations derived from decorative morphology. His ambition to succeed socially led him to participate in the competition.
He won the competition, but at the price of becoming a victim of the ruthless mechanism of state power. His story, which ended in suicide just before the unveiling of the monument, has a Faustian dimension (see the quote in the title).
Some important representatives of the interwar avant-garde also joined the official cultural policy. Their stories may lack Švec's dramatic quality, but they are also evidence of the humiliation of their own personalities at the cost of social success.