Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia and Other Writings

Karel Teige
Introduction by Jean-Louis Cohen
Translations by Irena Murray and David Britt

The writings of graphic designer, prolific critic, and avant-garde partisan Karel Teige (1900-1951) represent one of the great forgotten legacies of modern artistic theory. Together with Jaromír Krejcar and Josef Chocol, he founded the radical Devetsil group in 1920, an organization committed to promoting international modernism through manifestos and polemics. 

After meeting Le Corbusier in Paris in 1922, Teige increasingly turned his attention to architecture. Over the next decade he crystallized his ideas on functionalist and constructivist practice through relationships with ideological allies including Adolf Behne, Theo van Doesburg, Hannes Meyer, and El Lissitzky. In Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia (published in 1930), Teige both publicized the modernist efforts of his native country, and aligned them with the avant-garde efforts of the East and West. Now in English for the first time, this work is supplemented by a selection of Teige's other writings on art and architecture. An introduction by Jean-Louis Cohen vividly traces the diverse pursuits of this multifaceted figure. 

Jean-Louis Cohen (1949-2023) authored over 30 books on architectural history and was a preeminent authority on Le Corbusier. Irena Murray is head of the Blackader-Lauterman Library of Architecture and Art at McGill University, Montreal. David Britt has translated numerous books, including The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity by Aby Warburg.

384 pages
7 x 10 inches
328 b/w illustrations
paperback

Getty Publications
Imprint: Getty Research Institute

2000