wrought a perceptible change in the appearance of Czech town and country.
From now onwards, modern Czech architecture shows a very rapid evolution, but one with its feet on solid earth. Wagner’s geometrical methods, his doctrine of the true material and the useful form, have been given up, and a new outlook, already apparent in the latest painting and sculpture, has also come to govern architecture. Stress is laid on the plastic suppleness of the material, and more is demanded of it than geometric stability, the symbolical expression of static forces, and the balance of thrust and weight. The architect’s medium is no longer that passive material which modern craftsmen handled with rigid orthodoxy, it becomes more supple in the hands of daring innovators who want to get more out of it; the plan is an idea, the façade ceases to be in automatic correspondence with the interior and becomes an independent organism, space is plastic, the wall and the ceiling having equal value. The admirable theorist and practician of the new æsthetic, Paul Janák, is at the head of these movements towards unity and grandeur, and he is ably seconded by Josef Gočár. Vladislav Hofman, an artist of restless and unstable temperament, dreams of a beautiful civic architecture of the future. They all love applied architecture, the thousand-and-one articles of luxury or common utility, from the massive piece of furniture down to the smallest knick-knack. The “Artěl” Corporation already boasts ten years’ activity in this direction, and the “Prague Workshops,” presided over by Janák and Gočár, have already given rise to a school. All these artists are in the prime of their working powers, the number of good architects is growing, and they hope that the economic crisis through which Europe is passing, as a result of the World War, may soon be over, in order that they may devote their fullest activities to new work in every field of architecture and decorative
