Jindřich Chalupecký (12 February 1910 – 19 June 1990) was a Czech art and literary theorist and critic, essayist, art historian, and translator. He was the husband of poet Jiřina Hauková.
Life
1910–1948 Jindřich Chalupecký was born on 12 February 1910 in Prague. His father was a university professor of ophthalmology, author of books such as Heinrich Heine and The Music of Colors. His father died of infectious hepatitis when Jindřich was eight years old, and his mother remarried to his father's assistant, Kamil Fiala.Horová A, in: Slavíček L (ed.), 2016, p. 510 Fiala also worked as a translator from English and French and as a music and literary critic for the magazine Modern revue.Jak těžko býti analytikem / How difficult it is to be an analyst (Texts by Kamil Fiala from Modern revue) in: Souvislosti, 2007, no 4, pp. 146-162
Chalupecký became interested in art while studying at the gymnasium on Křemencova Street in Prague. From 1928 to 1932, he studied pedagogy, psychology, literature, French and history of art at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. He attended lectures by Jan Mukařovský, but found no connection between aesthetics as a scientific discipline and the meaning and place of art in the contemporary world.Jindřich Chalupecký - Cestou necestou 1999, pp. 8–9 He did not complete his studies.
He made his debut in 1930 with articles in the weekly Čin (Action) and the magazines Lumír, Blok, Přítomnost, Listy pro umění a kritiku.Horová A, in: Slavíček L (ed.), 2016, p. 512 He was a teacher and director of a business school, where the painter Zdenek Rykr also worked. In pre-war Czechoslovakia, he was one of the left-wing intellectuals and, in addition to publishing in literary magazines and newspapers, he was a theorist of Group 42, which began to form in the 1930s. In 1934, he spent several weeks in Paris, where he befriended František Gross and František Hudeček and curated an exhibition of his friend Zdenek Rykr. In 1935, he married Alžběta Dubitzská, but the couple divorced after the war in 1946.Onřej Houšťava (ed.), Světy Jindřicha Chalupeckého / Worlds of J. Ch., 2022, pp. 44–45
During World War II, he was a member of the illegal "Artistic Five" of the National Revolutionary Committee of Intellectuals. In 1942, he was editor of the magazine Život ('Life') published by Umělecká beseda, and after the war he was briefly secretary of the newly founded Block (Syndicate) of Visual Artists. From 1946 to 1948 he was editor-in-chief of the quarterly magazine Listy ('Pages' for art and philosophy), and from 1946 to 1949 he was a member of the committee of the literary department of the Umělecká beseda. In 1944, the UB's Fine Arts Department published his study The Meaning of Fine Arts. In 1948, he was a member of the State Publishing Commission, and from 1948 to 1949, he was a member of the Syndicate of Czech Writers and secretary of the Art Council of the Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists.
1948–1968 After the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état, he was labeled a proponent of "decadent art" and lost the opportunity to publish. In 1949, his article Intellectuals under Socialism was published anonymously, abroad describing the cultural wasteland at the very beginning of communist rule. He took a job in the exhibition department of ÚLUV (Center of Folk Art Production), from where he moved to the Textilní tvorba (Textile design) company, and from 1959 he was head of the theoretical department of the Institute of Housing and Clothing Culture in Prague (ÚBOK).Jiří Šetlík, afterword. in: Jindřich Chalupecký, Cestou-necestou / By hook or by crook 1999. 1999, pp. 279–287 Textile art was not subject to ideological supervision by the Communist Party, and Chalupecký was able to travel to exhibitions abroad and had access to books and catalogs of modern art.Jindřich Chalupecký, Umění dnes / Art today, 1st ed., NČSVU, Prague 1966. 263 pp. Orientace Vol. 4. He made a number of new friends among the younger generation of artists who opposed the aesthetic dogmas of socialist realism.
In the 1960s, he retired with the intention of reviewing art, but in the relaxed atmosphere of the mid-decade, he ended up participating in the revolutionary events in the art world. At the 1964 congress of the Union of Czechoslovak Visual Artists, which dismissed the former dogmatic leadership, he was elected a member of the presidium and became a member of the International Association of Art Critics. He was chairman of the editorial board of the magazine Výtvarná práce (Fine Arts) and the Obelisk publishing house, and from 1965 to 1970 he was curator of the Václav Špála Gallery in Prague. Under his leadership, the gallery became a center for exhibitions of Czech modern art. Thanks to Chalupecký, many artists from the generation that emerged at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s exhibited there for the first time. The first Czech exhibition of Marcel Duchamp and the Japanese Gutai group also took place there. In 1967, he received the Antonín Matějček Award by the Union of Czechoslovak visual artists.Martin Vaněk, Jak je důležité míti Chalupeckého / How important it is to have Chalupecký, Artalk, 2022
In 1966, he organized an exhibition of Czech modern art entitled "Tschechoslowakische Kunst der Gegenwart" in Berlin, in 1967 "17 tsjechische kunstenaars" in The Hague, and in 1968 the exhibition "Arte contemporanea in Cecoslovacchia," which took place in 1969 at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte in Rome.Archivio digitale della Galleria Nazionale: "Arte contemporanea in Cecoslovacchia", 13 maggio 1969 - settembre 1969
1968–1990 After the occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, he was gradually removed from all his positions. After the publication of the article "All Power to the Workers' Councils", which emerged at the very end of the 1960s and called for the destruction of the "tradition of passivity" and a revolution that would pave the way for pluralism, he was again banned from publishing. He was last allowed to travel abroad in 1969 as a juror at the International Exhibition of Modern Art in Paris. Under the pretext of reconstruction, the Václav Špála Gallery was closed in 1970. In 1970, Chalupecký held two more exhibitions entitled Confrontation in the substitute space of the Galerie Nova at Voršilská Street. The second exhibition was closed the day after it opened under the pretext of heating repairsPavel Nešleha. K Zaostalým krok za krokem / Toward the backward step by step, Výtvarné umění 3–4, 1995, p. 95 and he then retired permanently. In the early 1970s, he was able to travel to Moscow, where he followed the activities of local avant-garde artists (Kabakov, Pivovarov, Bulatov, Steinberg, and others).Jindřich Chalupecký, Moscow Diary, Studio International 185, 1973, No. 952, p. 81–89 Since 1969, Chalupecký cooperated on exhibitions with Schwarz Gallery in Milan (František Janoušek, 1969, Jiří Kolář, 1972, Ladislav Novák, 1974) and with Baruch Gallery in Chicago (Jiří Balcar, 1979).
During normalization in the 1970s and 1980s, he was not allowed to work publicly. He collaborated with the unofficial club Jazz Section and samizdat editions Petlice and Kritický sborník (Critical collection). Some of his articles were published abroad in the 1970s and 1980s in foreign magazines Flash Art, Data, Opus International, Studio International, Art Monthly and Artibus et Historiae, where he wrote regular reviews of events on the Czech art scene and in other countries of the Soviet bloc.Jindřich Chalupecký, Cestou necestou / By hook or by crook 1999, p. 11
In 1978, he was asked to write a chapter on contemporary art in the USSR, Poland, and Czechoslovakia for an overview of art history published by the Berlin publishing house Ullstein Verlag. After 1980, he also wrote for the exile magazines Rozmluvy (London), Proměny and Cross-Currents. He maintained contact with the generation of artists of the 1960s, who created in private without the possibility of exhibiting. Between 1983 and 1988, he regularly met with a generation of artists who had graduated in the 1970s and had also become inconvenient for the regime, at the studio of Petr Pavlík. In 1988, Chalupecký participated in the founding of the New Group – a select association of artists, architects, and theorists that met in the hall of Prague's Hlahol Choir, opposite to Mánes Union of Fine Arts.Jiří Šetlík, afterword. in: Jindřich Chalupecký, Cestou-necestou / By hook or by crook 1999. 1999, p 284Marie Gabrielová, 2018, p. 30Aneta Skotníková, 2014, p. 20
After the fall of the communist regime, Chalupecký was already seriously ill and dependent on hemodialysis. On the initiative of Jiří Kolář, a public collection of works of art was organized at the end of 1989, the auction of which was to raise funds for the purchase of a hemodialysis machine.Museum Kampa: Collection for Jindřich Chalupecký The machine was eventually purchased by the Charter 77 Foundation. The donations were used to organize an exhibition entitled "Tribute to Jindřich Chalupecký" (16–28 January 1990), and the paintings became part of the collection of the Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation in Museum Kampa. Chalupecký died on 19 June 1990. He is buried at the Olšany Cemetery in Prague.
A selection of essays by Chalupecký, Cestou necestou / By hook or by crook (1934–1989), was prepared for samizdat publication in the late 1980s, but was revised several times until February 1990, when it was first taken on by the Odeon publishing house, which, however, ceased to exist shortly thereafter. This delayed the publication, and Chalupecký's selected works were not finally published until 1999 by H&H Publishing.
In 2014, the city of Prague named one of its parks after Chalupecký and Jiřina Hauková.Park Jiřiny Haukové a Jindřicha Chalupeckého
Awards 1967 Antonín Matějček Award 1991 Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in memoriam, III. class (1991)
At the end of his life, Chalupecký agreed that a prize would be awarded in his name to young artists. The prize was initiated by Theodor Pištěk, together with Václav Havel and Jiří Kolář.Petr Volf: Jindřich Chalupecký, Reflex 1.4.2006 The Jindřich Chalupecký Award, presented by the Jindřich Chalupecký Society,Jindřich Chalupecký Society is the most prestigious award that a Czech artist under the age of 35 can receive.
Work Chalupecký knew and commented on art from close up, almost from the inside, but without overemphasizing it, he drew on his deep knowledge of philosophy, history, and broader cultural and scientific contexts.Josef Hlaváček. Chalupeckého suma / Chalupecký's Sum, Výtvarná kultura, 1990, no. 3, ps. 3 He engaged in long discussions with artists, poets, and writers. Visits to their studios and workrooms allowed him to observe their work from an immediate proximity.Sedláková K., 2009, p. 12 He was probably the most influential figure in Czech art theory in the second half of the 20th century, a man of strong character, with knowledge spanning a number of fields, who wrote about art in a way that is difficult to imitate and has yet to be surpassed. He himself believed that the purpose of the work of an art critic was not to classify the present in history, but to find words for what vaguely occupies the minds of artists, thereby contributing to the creation of a spiritual environment for them and for those who encounter their work.