Avant Garde

As we sped through a hundred years of design history (in my history of design class last semester), there were multiple things that stood out to me, one of which was Czech Cubism. While Cubism is a popular art movement, it was less common in architecture and the design world. It was predominately in the Czech Republic, and specifically Prague, that Cubist architecture was created. Everyone knows Picasso but fewer people know of Pavel Janák or Josef Gočar and the House of the Black Madonna.

Late Thursday, my friend messaged me saying she had a free weekend from her Maymester in Milan and would be able to come visit this weekend. On her list of sights to see in Prague was the House of the Black Madonna. With the whirlwind of activity and sightseeing we had been doing in Prague, I had completely forgotten about all the design-related sights that just months earlier we had talked about in class.

Within the House of the Black Madonna, there is the only Cubist café in the world as well as four stories of Cubist-designed objects and furniture. Works by Pavel Janák, Josef Gočár, Vlastislav Hofman, and many more were featured. While it is interesting to learn about this time period in class, nothing compares to seeing the objects in real life.