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Bohemian idyll

Lada's village scenes are the nation's memory
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
December 26th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Twilight of a way of life. One of Josef Lada's scenes from the Czech countryside.
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Josef Lada (1887–1957)

at Obecní dům (Municipal House), Nám. Republiky 5, Prague 1–Old Town.
Open daily 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Ends Feb. 3, 2008.

Fifty years after his death, Josef Lada’s simple paintings and illustrations of Czech mythology, scenes of village life and an idyllic countryside still go to the heart of the Czech national psyche. Lada was born in 1887 in the village of Hrusice, southeast of Prague. He began working as an apprentice to an illustrator in 1905, then studied for only one year at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague in 1906. After just a year in Prague, his interest in an anarchist and proletarian political movement led him to a fateful meeting with the young writer Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923).

At this time Bohemia was still a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and practically all Czech artists and intellectuals were grumbling about the state of affairs, keenly anticipating the demise of the empire. Lada soon became the editor of a satirical magazine called Caricatures, and this current exhibition begins with his earliest political cartoons from this period. For some reason, devils dominate in the selection of his earliest works (posters for anarchist publications), though the demons are all done with a humorous tone.
In 1911 he joined the executive committee of Hašek’s farcical Party of Moderate Progress within the Limits of the Law. In this prewar period, the avant-garde also bloomed, and a new generation of artists across Europe abandoned realistic depictions of life and nature. Lada, however, didn’t follow this current. Instead, in 1911, he self-published a children’s ABC book titled My Alphabet and embarked on a lifelong pursuit of producing original picture books for children.
He didn’t abandon his political caricatures though, and these works make up a good portion of the show. Some of his best political cartoons reveal humans to be no better than animals. In various scenes, beasts run wild, ruling the world or pointing up humanity’s indignities and stupidities. For instance, in his caricature How England Does It (1912), huge whales are pulling English battleships across the sea. And in Farm Animals On Strike (1916), pigs and geese are fleeing a farm and shouting, “I won’t eat!” and “I won’t get fattened!”
In the 1920s Lada became a contributor (as an illustrator) to major Czech newspapers (Lidové noviny and České Slovo) and an author for the Melantrich publishing house. In 1926, Lada also published his illustrations in the first edition of Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk, which eventually became a classic of modern Czech literature for its antiwar stance and lampooning of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while at the same time championing a lackadaisical though crafty Czech national spirit.
Besides creating the inimitable figure of Švejk, Lada is equally known for his paintings and illustrations of Czech villages in all seasons, with their trademark primary colors, strong outlines and flattened perspective. Because of this style, he was considered (even criticized) by some contemporaries as a Neoclassical or Naive artist.
The majority of the exhibition shows Lada’s illustrations from dozens of classic children’s books and magazines, including his My Alphabet (1923), as well as Božena Němcová’s Czech Fairy Tales and Karel J. Erben’s Czech Children’s Rhymes. There are original drafts of The Good Soldier Švejk (1923–25), and on the walls there are numerous quotes by Lada insightfully explaining his state of mind in various periods of his life, taken from his 1942 book Chronicles of My Life.
In his works from this period, 1942 and after, viewers may notice a slight shift in his characters (this may be due to the curator’s selection of works): In his innocent images of rural folk, nativity scenes and village bliss, everybody (including the animals) tends to have more contented smiles, Lada’s earlier style of characters with a snarl becoming far fewer in number. There are still scenes depicting humans (or animals) in turmoil, but overall the illustrations are not as stinging as his earlier works, such as the series Communism in the Extreme (1919) or the cynical cycle How Newspapers are Made (1928), which was produced for České Slovo.
The second half of the exhibition is devoted to Lada’s paintings, with far fewer works on display. The themes are the same: the seasonal shifts in the countryside, and particularly children playing in village squares. There is almost always a chapel or a castle ruin on a hill in the background. There is a section of nativity scenes and nighttime scenes in happy village homes; there is a section dedicated to night watchmen, and a section devoted to water sprites.
At the end of the exhibit, a quote by Lada describes his affinity for the villagers he portrayed for most of his life: “I’m sorry that those earthy kinds of people are vanishing, the kind a town used to be full of and no one bothers about now. What characters they were! Each of them carved from a different kind of wood in a different shape ... And all of them full of life!”
This exhaustive retrospective of Lada’s work is without a doubt one of the best exhibits to visit in Prague during the holiday season. The villages and the earthy characters who populated them are still full of life today, at least in Lada’s art.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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