Mánes Association of Fine Artists

Named after the prominent Czech artist Josef Mánes (1820–1871), the Mánes Association of Fine Artists was founded in 1887 in Prague (with initial origins in 1885 in Munich) and became an influential establishment for promoting and exhibiting modern Czech artists as well as a purportedly international (though primarily European, and especially French) milieu.

At its founding, the painter and illustrator Mikuláš Aleš was named honorary president, and sculptor Stanislav Sucharda served as chief organizer and principal patron. Among the association’s earliest members were Prague-based art students, whose travels to Germany, Austria, and France cemented the pan-European scope of the group’s activities. In time, prominent Czech art critics and collectors, such as Vincenc Kramář, would join the Mánes Association, which also retained some foreign artists as members, including Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso, and architects Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Frank Lloyd Wright. The artist John Heartfield, who lived in exile in Prague in the mid-1930s due to the rise of National Socialism in Germany, was also a member.

In 1896 the Mánes Association established its own arts and literary journal, Volné směry, under the initial editorial leadership of Sucharda, artists and professors Karel Vítězslav Mašek and Jan Preisler, and, later, the architect Jan Kotěra as well as Emil Filla. The journal promoted the work of painters, sculptors, and architects in Prague as well as those who were part of a broader European circle. By 1903 Volné směry had gained eighteen hundred subscribers, many of whom were also members of Mánes and whose work was likewise promoted in the publication. Its offices—first on Vodičková street and later, Wenceslas Square—also served as venues to sell artworks by members of the Mánes Association; these artworks were in turn advertised in the journal.

The association held its first group exhibition in 1898 at the Topičův Salon, the private gallery of the publisher František Topič, and was intended to establish a distinct and autonomous Czech art. A second exhibition was held the same year, while a third was mounted two years later. It included sixty works by members and would ultimately travel to Brno, as well as the Künstlerhaus in Vienna, garnering international enthusiasm for the exhibiting Czech artists, who included Preisler, František Bílek, and František Kupka.

A special issue on Rodin in Volné směry preceded an exhibition of his sculpture in Prague in 1902. Other presentations of Western European art followed, such as a 1905 exhibition dedicated to Edvard Munch, a display of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Art in 1907, and another in 1923 dedicated to nineteenth- and twentieth-century French art.

The Mánes Association attracted a large number of visitors to its exhibitions. In 1920 a series of exhibitions at the Municipal House, Rudolfinum, and Topičův Salon, held to commemorate the hundredth birthday of the latter’s namesake, drew forty thousand visitors. At this time, the association had fifteen founding members, eighty-six regular members, and 1,121 contributing members.

In 1930 the association found a permanent home on the Vltava River at Masarykovo nábřeží 250/1 in a mill and water tower converted by the architect (and Mánes member) Otakar Novotný. The first Czechoslovak president, T.G. Masaryk (after whom the address is now named), supported the gallery’s construction. In its new space, the Mánes Association functioned as a gallery as well as a bookshop and café. Advertisements in Volné směry show that the group aimed to reach a broad public by offering valuable works of art at low prices, rotations of new paintings, and regular exhibitions of its member artists.

Early exhibitions in this new building included the 1930 display Sto let českého umění 1830–1930 (100 Years of Czech Art 1830–1930), followed by Umění současné Francie (The Art of Contemporary France) the next year. One particularly notable show, Poesie 1932 (Poetry 1932), was among the first exhibitions of international Surrealism and included works by Czech artists such as Josef Šíma, Jindřich Štyrský, and Toyen—all of whom had spent time in Paris—as well as major European figures Hans Arp, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Paul Klee, Joan Miró, and Yves Tanguy, to name a few. Max Ernst’s Pietà or Revolution by Night (1923; Tate), which had been loaned to the exhibition by Paul Eluard, sold for the highest price. A continued commitment to Surrealism is indicated by another exhibition in 1935, První výstava skupiny surrealistů v ČSR (The First Exhibition of the Surrealist Group in Czechoslovakia), which highlighted paintings, collages, and photographs by Štyrský and Toyen and the sculptures of Vincenc Makovský; the trio were all members of both the Mánes Association and the Czech Surrealist Group, founded in 1934. Many of the works from these exhibitions are now in the collection of the National Gallery, Prague.

The Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in late 1938 had a major impact on the Mánes Association’s exhibition schedule. The gallery’s leadership canceled two shows—one on German and Hungarian art (nations that had both annexed Czechoslovak border regions) and a second on contemporary art—and its exhibition program during the Protectorate began to reflect a patriotic dedication to Czech themes. In 1956, during the Stalinist period, the Mánes Association was dissolved as a private society. The gallery remained, however, and today still stands at its location on the Vltava.