The project is based on the research into the life and work of Růžena Zátková (1885-1923), which substantially surpasses the Czech art historical context. Having received her art education in Prague and Munich, this artist was active in the Futurist circle in Rome and reached the immediate circle of F. T. Marinetti; she had contacts with the artists of the Russian avantgarde and she responded to other European fine-art impulses (for.ex. Ivan Meštrovič). The work of Růžena Zátková is wide ranging, although only fragments of it have survived, it reaches from Primitivist tendencies to Abstraction, from Symbolism to the dynamics of Futurism and its experiments with different materials and with movement. Her unreserved acceptance of the new trends in art, unique in local context, opens another circle of issues, most of all about the relationship between Czech and European art, about the acceptance and/or refusal of the principles of European art in the local context (Primitivism, Abstraction, Futurist simultaneity). Marinetti´s journey to Prague in 1921, an event in whose preparation Zátková also participated, symbolises the efforts to penetrate the reserved attitudes of the Czech environment, above all to Italian Futurism. It is a concrete, charged moment that can serve as a model for analysing and evaluating the abovementioned artistic bonds and barriers.

Publications