Prague

Fülszöveg

As early as the ii''' century, Cosmas, one of the first Bohemian chroniclers, proclaimed: 'See, I perceive the city, whose glory reaches to the stars.' His paean of love for his native Prague novj^ seems prophetic: the venerable city lapped by the waters of the Vltava has indeed inscribed itself in the history of the continent. Here, at the centre of Europe, disparate philosophical, religious and artistic tendencies fi-om all points of the compass met and mingled. And in every famous place, be it the Old Tovra Hall, Hradcany or Josefov, Prague to this day displays a mixture of styles and epochs that make its tovrascape quite unique.
Masterpieces such as the Municipal building. Hotel Európa and National Theatte bear witness to the important role played by Prague at the turn of the century. With a renewed sense of its own worth, Prague then rivalled Paris, Brussels and Vienna as a centre of fin-de-siecle intellectual life. After centuries of oppression and conflict, the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

As early as the ii''' century, Cosmas, one of the first Bohemian chroniclers, proclaimed: 'See, I perceive the city, whose glory reaches to the stars.' His paean of love for his native Prague novj^ seems prophetic: the venerable city lapped by the waters of the Vltava has indeed inscribed itself in the history of the continent. Here, at the centre of Europe, disparate philosophical, religious and artistic tendencies fi-om all points of the compass met and mingled. And in every famous place, be it the Old Tovra Hall, Hradcany or Josefov, Prague to this day displays a mixture of styles and epochs that make its tovrascape quite unique.
Masterpieces such as the Municipal building. Hotel Európa and National Theatte bear witness to the important role played by Prague at the turn of the century. With a renewed sense of its own worth, Prague then rivalled Paris, Brussels and Vienna as a centre of fin-de-siecle intellectual life. After centuries of oppression and conflict, the cosmopolitan city welcomed with open arms innovations both Czech and foreign. National conflicts were resolved and transcended. Against this background of apocalypse and renewal, new artistic tendencies blossomed. Decadence, Symbolism and Synthetism here attained their apogee, preparing the way for modernism and the avant-garde. Alongside well-known and lesser known names such as Maximilián Pirner, Arnost Procházka, Jan Preisler, Jan Kotëra and Franz Kafka, Alfons Mucha is one of the most celebrated sons of turn-of-the-century Prague. Artist and craftsman, he was a leading representative of Jugendstil/Art Nouveau/Sezession, a wholly new style of art intended 'to make life more beautiftd, to change it and serve it in eveiy way'.
With 270 illustrations and invaluable information on the worlds of literature, painting and architecture, this volume restores a neglected aspect of European history, taking the reader on a voyage of discovery through fin-de-siecle Prague. Vissza