S lodí jez ̆ dováz ̆í c ̆ aj kávu^195
(With the Ship that Carries Tea and Coffee)
Karel TeigeThe modern design movement
was born in Western Europe
and Russia, but didn’t stay
there for long. During the
period of creative ferment
between the world wars,
Poland, Hungary, and
Czechoslovakia also became
capitals of the new design and
New Typography. Even with
the rise of totalitarianism,
which brought the engines of
progressive expression in
Germany and the Soviet Union to a grinding halt—squelching Russian
constructivism and productivism in the early 1930 s and closing the Bauhaus
in Germany in 1933 —avant-gardists continued to work freely in Warsaw,
Budapest, and Prague. Hitler and Stalin had not begun their respective
occupations of these autonomous states until the late 1930 s, allowing a
brief respite for avant-garde art and design to develop before the war and
postwar repression.
After World War I, Prague, Czechoslovakia’s capital, was the
crossroads for exponents of the new cultural “isms.” The progressive
movement of longest duration was a group called Devetsil, a confederation
of left-wing writers, artists, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, and
typographers. They were known unofficially as the Czech Bauhaus, even
though they were more diverse philosophically and methodologically than
their German counterparts.
No one can trace where the name Devetsilactually came from.
(In Czech the word is a pun on two roots: a botanical term meaning
“spiky butterbur” and a mathematical term meaning “nine forces.”) Nor
is it known how many people were active members. Like other twentieth-
century design “isms,” Devetsil wed art to technology in an effort to unite
form and function. In this respect, it was informed by the sociopolitical
ideology manifest in the USSR that spread throughout Europe during the
1920 s. Devetsil’s leader, Karel Teige ( 1900 – 1951 ) was a prolific writer, poet,
critic, painter, designer, and typographer whose visual models included