During our stay in Prague we enjoyed several of the city's art museums and galleries. By far my favorite was the Black Madonna House with its three floors of Czech cubist art. I took a lot of art history classes in college but when it came to Cubism only Picasso and Braque came to mind. I don't remember ever reading about one of these influential and passionate artists. My traveling buddy and I spent an entire afternoon here, dumbstruck by the beautiful bronzes of Otto Gutfreund and the oil paintings by Emil Filla and Kubista.
Prague was the only place in the world where architecture and the decorative arts were influenced by cubism before World War I. The movement flourished here between 1910 and 1914, a far too brief period of time. The cubists wanted to break up vertical and horizontal lines. Planes were angled, creating a geometric austerity that is very pleasing to the eye. It's hard to believe it was considered avant garde at the time. Today the architecture of the Madonna House blends in so well with the surrounding neighborhood that without really studying the angles, lines and placement of the windows, it's difficult to even see the cubist influence. We live in such an eclectic world that such buildings are now commonplace. We need the Frank Gehry's of the world to shock us with massive slides of undulating steel.
The Black Madonna House was designed by the cubist architect Josef Gocar. It was originally a department store with a cafe on the first floor that is still a favorite hang-out for locals and tourists alike. We had our first hot red wine here, served in cubist style on a square plate. For the next week, hot red wine was our daily "cocktail" of choice!
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| Powder Tower around the corner |
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