‘Is There a Jewish Art?‘: Group exhibitions of Jewish Artists in Czechoslovakia

My lecture focuses on the two most important group exhibitions of Jewish artists organized during Czechoslovakia’s First Republic. The first exhibition of Jewish artists in the newly emerged Czechoslovakia was held as early as in September 1921 on the occasion of the Twelfth Zionist Congress in Karlsbad. Alongside questions of the building of the Jewish state, the immigration of Jews, and politics, culture was also an issue. The Berlin publishing house Ewer had arranged an exhibition of its books and at the same time shared in the preparation of the artistic exhibition which presented altogether twenty artists. A catalogue was issued for the exhibition in which however only eleven of the artists were represented, such as Budko, Steinhardt and Struck. The exhibition opens up many questions; for example, why the other artists were not represented in the catalogue, and most of all why only one artist (Friedrich Feigl) demonstrably connected with the Czech lands took part in the exhibition, when the exhibition in fact took place in Czechoslovakia? And just how important was the Zionist mindset of the exhibiting artists?

The second very important group exhibition of Jewish artists took place in February 1930 in Prague. Altogether forty-eight Jewish artists were presented at the exhibition. Among those exhibiting were for example Chagall, Liebermann, Ury, Pissarro, of home artists Radnitz, Oppenheimer and Vogel, and the painters linked with Mandatory Palestine, Blum and Salomonowitz. There was no other exhibition held in the Czech lands to compare with it; historically it was the first and at the same time the last great representative survey of works by Jewish artists. On the basis of the catalogue and of more than thirty newspaper reviews that have been traced we can make a very good reconstruction of this exhibition and answer the question of several reviewers of that time as to whether such a thing as ‘Jewish Art‘ really existed or not.