constructivism and surrealism. An ardent socialist, he developed a concept
called ars una, a modernist reprise of the nineteenth-century movement to
integrate art into every aspect of life. In the 1920 s he devoted himself to
typography and “pictorial poetry,” producing, editing, and designing books
first in a constructivist and later in a surrealist spirit.
Teige promoted strict typographic standards consistent with those
of the European avant garde. Elementary, unadorned geometric forms
devoid of any bourgeois decorative vestiges made communications more
functional. In his early work, from around 1922 , Teige used one basic device,
a black circle, which was both eye-catching and a “word symbol”
representing the avant-garde’s larger rejection of archaic and contemporary
superficial design trends. “The relationship between Teige’s theoretical work
and his typographic rules can be demonstrated by the circle,” wrote Karel
Srp (“Karel Teige and the New Typography,”Rassenga, 1965 ). It represented
a variety of things, a sun, a ball, a human head. “According to Teige the
neutral geometric forms did not lose their identification with man....
Teige’s functionalism was strongly anthropocentric.” Therefore, the circle
was not merely an abstract image on a page. Teige believed that abstract
paintings were decorative, and therefore circles should never be used in
painting because it was form without sense. The circle used in a book or
journal cover, however, was endemic to the structure and meaning of text.
Teige concurred with El Lissitzky’s notion that the modern book should be
looked at before it is read, but reading was the ultimate functional goal.
Of his many book and book jacket designs the title pages and
“illustrations” for S lodí jez ̆ dováz ̆í c ̆aj a kávu(With the Ship that Carries Tea
and Coffee, 1927 ) by Konstantin Biebl is a unique application of constructivist
form for its combination of elementary graphic devices and pastel palette,
an example of how kindred designers in different parts of the world
reinterpreted the language of modern design based on their own requisites.
Devetsil members longed to travel to exotic lands, and as
spokesman for the movement, Teige announced, “The most wonderful
thing would be to live in a fast train coach.” Since Bohemia does not
border on an ocean the members were ostensibly landlocked. Only Biebl
dared make a long journey over land and sea to Ceylon, Sumatra, and Java.
His book, a wanderer’s travelogue in poetic verse, was not, however,
illustrated with conventionally nostalgic or romantic pictures of distant
places, but rather abstractly, in dynamic compositions using typecase
materials, similar to El Lissitzky’s typecase illustrations in For the Voice,
Mayakovsky’s book of socialist poems.
In Teige’s 1927 essay, “Modern Type” (which echoed similar
manifestoes by Lazar El Lissitzky and Lásló Moholy-Nagy), he argued for
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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