Miloslava Vrbova-Štefková | Ballet dancers

Czech artist Miloslava Vrbova-Štefková (1909-1991) was an traditionalist post-impressionist painter.

During the 1937-1938 Miloslava Vrbova-Štefková studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris with Czech Abstract painter František Kupka (1871-1957).

Besides the dancers, the ballet scenes and portraits, Miloslava Vrbova also painted landscapes and the Prague urban motifs, religious scenes (the Crucifixion in the church Žinkovie), still lifes and flowers.

František Drtikol | Art Déco / Nouveau photographer

František Drtikol (1883-1961) was a Czech photographer and became famous for his modernist portraits and acts in the style of the late Art Nouveau.

Born in 1883 in the mining town of Pribram, west of Prague, Drtikol would go on to study photography in Munich, where he would be heavily influenced by the Art Nouveau.

Early on he divided his time among both drawing and photography, but focused primarily on the latter upon his return home; both as an art form and as a means for making a living.

Václav Brožík | Academic painter

Václav Brožík (1851-1901) was a Czech painter who worked in the academic style.

Brožík was born on 6 March 1851 in Třemošná, Bohemia, Austrian Empire (now the Czech Republic).

He came from a poor family, studying lithography and porcelain painting through apprenticeships.

Yary Dluhos, 1944 | Impressionist painter

Yary Dluhos was born in an area of the Czech Republic considered by many to be a center of culture, the city of Olomouc.

Strongly influenced by the historical and picturesque ambiance of her native Olomouc, she soon began to paint and draw early in her childhood.

All her formative years spent drawing and painting finally culminated with her acceptance to the renowned art school in Uherski Hradiste, in the Czech Republic.

Antonietta Brandeis | Il Ponte Vecchio, Firenze, 1910

Antonietta Brandeis (Miskovice, 13 gennaio 1848 - Firenze, 20 marzo 1926) è stata una pittrice Italiana di ritratti e di pale religiose.

Giovinezza

Nata in Boemia, a Miskovice, l'adolescente Antonietta è menzionata come pupilla dell'artista praghese Karel Javůrek. Dopo la morte del padre, la madre Giuseppina Dravhozvall si sposò con il veneziano Giovanni Nobile Scaramella; apparentemente la famiglia si trasferì poco dopo in laguna.

Nel 1867 entrò nell'Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, figurando come una delle prime donne a seguire lezioni di Belle Arti in Italia.

Infatti, le donne si vedranno riconosciuto il diritto legale di ricevere un'educazione artistica solo nel 1875.

Jaroslav Seifert | Rondò di primavera

Tu devi credermi, io sarei felice

se sorrisi mandassero i tuoi occhi

quando stasera dovrai ricucire

ciò che le mie mani ti hanno strappato.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Jaroslav Seifert | Di pomeriggio uno scroscio di pioggia..

Di pomeriggio uno scroscio di pioggia

fece profumare anche l’erba pesta

e la sera, piena di primaverile malinconia,

lenta s’univa alla notte.

Jeff Rowland

Jaroslav Seifert | Se al cuore si potesse dire / If one could tell one’s heart…

Se al cuore si potesse dire:

non correre!

Se potessi ordinargli: brucia!

Già si spegne.

Marc Chagall

Vojtěch Hynais | Art Nouveau painter

Vojtěch Adalbert Hynais (also Albert; 1854, Vienna - 1925, Prague) was a Czech painter, designer and graphics artist.

He designed the curtain of the Prague National Theatre, decorated a number of buildings in Prague and Vienna, and was a founding member of the Vienna Secession.

He was made an Officer of the Légion d'honneur in 1924.

Gabriel von Max | Romantic / Symbolist painter

Gabriel Cornelius Ritter von Max (23 August 1840 – 24 November 1915) was a Prague-born Austrian painter.

He was born Gabriel Cornelius Max, the son of the sculptor Josef Max and Anna Schumann.

He studied between 1855 and 1858 at the Prague Academy of Arts with Eduard von Engerth.

His studies included parapsychology (somnambulism, hypnotism, spiritism), Darwinism, Asiatic philosophy, the ideas of Schopenhauer, and various mystical traditions.

The spiritual-mystical movement was emphasized by the writings of Carl du Prel, and the Munich painter Albert Keller was also an influence.

Karel Balcar, 1966 | Figurative painter

Karel Balcar (born in Lanškroun) is a Czech painter.

Balcar studied at the Czech Technical University in Prague (1984-1985) and at the University of Economics, Prague (1986-1987).

In 1992 he enrolled Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and graduated in 1999 from studio of professor Zdeněk Beran.

Most of his exhibitions since then have been in Prague, including venues such as the Liechtenstein Palace, town hall and the Rudolfinum but also the cities of Brno, Hradec Králové and at the Czech Centre in New York City.

He lives and works in Prague.

Lettere d'amore di Franz Kafka a Felice Bauer

"L'amore non è un problema, come non lo è un veicolo: problematici sono soltanto il conducente, i viaggiatori e la strada"

- Franz Kafka.

Kafka rifiutava la carnalità e la sua stessa corporeità. Egli stesso racconta il disgusto per il proprio corpo quando il padre accompagnandolo in piscina lo costringeva a denudarsi.

Lo stesso senso di ripugnanza egli lo esprimeva nei confronti dell'amore sessuale che descrive ad esempio ne "Il castello" come qualcosa di sporco e che riduceva l'uomo all'animalità.

Nella sua vita Kafka ebbe tre relazioni, maggiormente epistolari.

La più significativa rimase la relazione con la Felice Bauer (1887-1960), una steno-dattilografa prussiana d'origini ebraiche, la donna che liberò la forza creatrice di Kafka.

Franz Kafka, lo scrittore boemo, tra i maggiori del Novecento, incontrò Felice Bauer a Praga, in casa dell'amico Max Brod, la sera del 13 agosto del 1912.

Lui aveva 29 anni e lei 25, arrivata a Praga per lavoro.

Franz Kafka | Domenica saremo insieme..

Nella primavera del 1919, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) - una delle maggiori figure della letteratura del XX secolo ed importante esponente del modernismo e del realismo magico europeo - conosce la giornalista, scrittrice e traduttrice Ceca Milena Jesenská (Praga, 10 agosto 1896 - Campo di concentramento di Ravensbrück, 17 maggio 1944), moglie del critico e scrittore ebreo Ernst Pollak (1886-1947), residente a Vienna, in cui si era dovuta trasferire dopo essere stata allontanata dalla famiglia che non le aveva perdonato il matrimonio con un ebreo.

Poiché gli introiti di Pollak non erano sufficienti per un'adeguata vita della coppia a Vienna, Milena contribuì lavorando come traduttrice.

Nel 1919 si imbatté in un breve racconto dello scrittore praghese Franz Kafka, e gli scrisse per ottenere l'autorizzazione alla traduzione dal tedesco al ceco. Da quel momento cominciò una intensa corrispondenza tra i due.

Franz Kafka e Milena Jesenska

Antonín Hudeček (1872-1941) | Plein Air painter

Antonín Hudeček was a Czech landscape painter.

After completing his primary education in Roudnice, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, with Maximilian Pirner and Václav Brožík; devoting himself mostly to figure painting.

From 1891-1893, he continued his studies in Munich with Otto Seitz. He opened a workshop in Prague in 1895.

Shortly after, he joined a group of painters, led by Julius Mařák, that went for plein aire painting excursions; mostly in the area around Okoř.

Pavel Bergr, 1957 | Imaginative painter

Pavel Bergr was born in the city of Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic. He spent his childhood in a Gothic castle in Střekov and a Renaissance palace in Libochovice.

He studied glass making and blowing at the Shool of Glasses in Zelezny Brod, illustration and graphic design at the School of Applied Arts in Prague and at the "Accademia di Belle Arti Pietro Vannucci", in Perugia, Italy.

Member of the International Imaginative Artists Association (IIAA).

Since 1986 Bergr realizes more than 40 individual exhibitoins: Czech and Slovak Republic, Germany, Austria.

Jakub Schikaneder | Impressionistic nocturnes

Jakub Schikaneder (1855-1924) came from the family of a German customs office clerk.

Despite the family's poor background, he was able to pursue his studies, thanks in part to his family's love of art; an ancestor was Urban Schikaneder, the elder brother of the librettist Emanuel Schikaneder.

After having completed his studies in Prague and Munich 1871-1879, Schikaneder, alongside Emanuel Krescenc Liška, was involved in the furnishing of the royal box in the National Theatre in Prague; however, this work was lost in a fire in 1881.

Alphonse Mucha | Art Nouveau painter

Czech painter, illustrator and graphic artist, Alphonse Maria Mucha (1860-1939) is most often remembered for the prominent role he played in shaping the aesthetics of French Art Nouveau at the turn of the century.

He produced illustrations, advertisements, decorative panels, and designs, which became among the best-known images of the period.

Rainer Maria Rilke | Letters on Rodin / Lettere su Rodin

Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian poet and novelist, 1875-1926) to Lou Andreas-Salomè
Berlino,Westend
Oberneuland bei Bremen,
8 august 1903

... "When I first came to Rodin and lunched with him out there in Meudon with people to whom one was not introduced, at the same table with strangers, I knew that his house was nothing to him, a paltry little necessity perhaps, a roof for time of rain and sleep; and that it was no care to him and no weight upon his solitude and composure".

Jaroslav Seifert / Vladimir Volegov: "Prima che asciughino quei due o tre baci"

Prima che asciughino quei due o tre baci

sulla fronte

e qui e lí,

ti chinerai per bere

acqua d’argento dallo specchio,

e se nessuno ti starà a guardare

ti toccherai le labbra con la bocca.

Jaroslav Seifert | Fragment of a Letter / Frammento di una lettera

All night rain lashed the windows.

I couldn’t go to sleep.

So I switched on the light

and wrote a letter.

Victor Nizovtsev