CARTOONS
This exhibition of cartoons, illustrations and collages represents a selection of Adolf Hoffmeister's work. There are several works from 1927, such as those of Jean Cocteau and Vlasta Burian, and more from the 1930s, including drawings of Jiří Voskovec and Ján Werich, Jaroslav Ježek and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the President of the Republic, together with Edvard Beneš. During the post-war years, he did caricatures of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Georges Braque and others. Hoffmeister also drew important figures from the ranks of writers of the 1950s and 1960s, such as: Milan Kundera, Ľudovít Vaculík and Josef Škvorecký. His drawings were always based on personal meetings.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Hoffmeister's illustrations are represented by line drawings for the children’s travel book Ďalekohľad (Telescope), which he also wrote. The book, which was published in the 1950s, featured realistic and non-stylized drawings. In another book entitled Made in Japan, his style is relaxed and closer to traditional Japanese culture. Other black and white illustrations were created for the travel book Mrakodrapy v pralese (Skyscrapers in the Rainforest), while Gold (L'Or), the book by Blaise Cendrars, is illustrated by collages.
COLLAGES
After 1969, Hoffmeister was no longer permitted to be publicly active and organize exhibitions. As a result, in June 1973 he organized a private exhibition in his apartment, which featured his collages from the fall of 1972 and the winter and spring of 1973. These collages were not created from classic xylographic cutouts from old periodicals, but foreign color magazines such as Elle, Marie Claire and others. They contained gloomy visions of the future of the world, especially due to the threat of a nuclear or ecological catastrophe, and reflected the atmosphere of the period and the artist’s inner experiences. The collages were given the following titles: Po ľuďoch zostali na svete biele miesta (There Are White Places Left on Earth by Humans), Slučka (The Loop), Rozbitý život (Broken Life),
Adolf Hoffmeister, a versatile artist and writer, was born in Prague in 1902. He entered grammar school as a founding member of the Devětsil avant-garde group and continued his studies at the Faculty of Law of Charles University. His first book of short prose and poems, Podmorské hviezdy (The Underwater Stars) was published in 1922, followed by his first exhibitions in the Mánes exhibition hall in 1927 and in Paris in 1928. In the 1930s, he collaborated with the Osvobozené divadlo (Prague Free Theater) and the E. F. Burian Theatre, however, due to his anti-fascist stance, he was forced to emigrate to France. At the beginning of the war, he was imprisoned for several months, before fleeing to the USA, where he became the editor of the future Voice of America. In 1948 he was appointed ambassador to France, but was dismissed in 1951. After returning to his homeland, he was appointed professor at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM), and devoted himself to writing and illustrating his own books. During Normalization, he was stripped of all of his positions and dismissed from public life. He died in July 1973 at a cottage in the village of Říčky.
