A Dot on the Map: Some Remarks on the Magazine NovÃ¡ Bratislava

It is now twenty years since the Berlin Wall fell and with it fell all prohibitions against consulting the archives in the countries of the ancient communist block. Numerous research projects have allowed scholars to advance their knowledge of the active avant-garde circles in Central Europe in the 1920s and 1930s—a subject of taboo during the postwar period. Some remarkable fi ndings have already brought to light a wealth of artistic creations. This impulse of rediscovery has offered new views of the theory of centers and peripheries: one removes Paris from its throne as the capital of arts, one pits the cosmopolitan Berlin against the infl uential Moscow, and between these east-west poles, one revalorizes Warsaw, Prague, Zagreb and Bucharest.

However, within this revised historic-artistic geography, there are some areas of relative obscurity. There is considerable disparity between the amount of research into (and presentation of ) art and literature of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland on the one hand compared to that of Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia on the other. 1

The case of Slovakia is in fact extremely interesting: this young country that resulted from the schism of Czechoslovakia in 1993, must endure the ever-present brilliance of its neighbor and “ex-spouse” the Czech Republic. Research into the Czech avant-garde from between World Wars I and II is extensive 2 and has come to represent Czechoslovakia, while that of Slovak avant-garde is distinctly less. For example, who abroad (and even how many in Slovakia) can name a Slovak avant-garde artist? I do endeavor to explain

a dot on the map: some remarks on the magazine nová bratislava

Sonia de Puineuf

journal of modern periodical studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2010Copyright © 2010 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

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in this article the reasons for this lack of visibility of Slovak avant-garde (having left Slovakia for France thirteen years ago, I am not sure of being able to comprehend all the circumstances of the situation), but I hope to increase the visibility of this avant-garde, to display its stakes, and to draw its outlines. While fl ipping through the magazine Nová Bratislava (1931–32), a very rare magazine today, 3 it is easy to see that, while this avant-garde has been neglected, it is wholly worthy of interest.

nová bratislava —a “trendy” editorial plan

The publication of the magazine Nová Bratislava has to be situated in the particular cultural and historical context of the young Czechoslovakian Republic founded in 1918, thanks to the Treaty of Versailles. The new state was composed of two principal nations, Czechs and Slovaks, sharing many similarities on the linguistic level and on the historic level (especially the memory of the Grand Moravia of the eighth and ninth centuries). Socially, however, the two comprising nations were quite different. Slovakia repre-sented virginal, agricultural territory but was severely lacking in cities. The progressive Czechoslovak artists studied and worked in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, situated in the Czech part of the country. In the early 1920s, a group of young intellectuals and artists was born in Prague: the famous Devětsil. At the time, the city was a center for avant-gardes 4 because of a convergence of two major artistic infl uences—the USSR and Western Europe (particularly France then Germany). In 1923, Karel Teige, head of Devětsil, started to theorize what was called “poetism”—a specifi c Czech aesthetic that played an important role in international constructivism. Ephemeral literary reviews are what backed up this artistic creativity in Prague and Brno (another important city in the Czech part of the country) during the twenties. The review Nová Bratislava connected with this literary activity. However, two particular points must be revealed: fi rst, it is a review that was born in the Slovak part of the country in Bratislava, known as the “little big city,” a city much smaller than Prague and was seen as a provin-cial town 5 ; and second, it was published in the beginning of thirties, quite late compared to the Czech reviews.

The review published only four numbers, the fi rst of which appears in November 1931, and the last in March 1932. It was an intense, though short-lived, burst of editorial activity—four numbers in fi ve months! A fi fth number was planned, if we are to believe the announcement of the


102 a dot on the map

dead-line for submission of articles, 6 but, as far as can be determined, it was never published. The title and subtitle of the magazine immediately make us plunge into a particular atmosphere of modernity—that of the international avant-garde, which defi ned its outlines in the course of the twenties in Central Europe, with Germany being a major locus of this



creative energy. And Slovak avant-garde, the heir of Czech Devětsil at the beginning of the thirties, shares a lot of ideals with Germany, the country that gave birth to New Architecture, the New Typography and New Photog-raphy. This affi liation is demanded in a way that cannot be more obvious by the formal choices of the editorial team: it is above all about format and about the layout of the magazine. As is stipulated on the fi rst page, the magazine “is published in normalized format norm cs A4 (210 x 297 cm).” 7 The “norm cs” means Czechoslovakian norm, but that, in reality, is a pure and simple transposition of the norm worked out by the famous German Institute for Normalization (DIN). The creator of format A4, which is used at present, was a certain engineer Walter Porstmann whose learned book on language and writing, Sprache und Schrift published in 1920, oriented the thinking behind Bauhaus in the fi eld of the typography. 8 In the work, Porstmann, who dreams of fi nding the universal language of humanity through writing, advocates the abrogation of the capital letters to the advan-tage of lower cases—an idea adopted unconditionally by Bauhaus and proponents of the New Typography. It is precisely for this reason that the title of the magazine Nová Bratislava is exclusively typographed in lower cases, as well as all other words appearing on the cover, as for instance the subtitle “monthly magazine of the new Slovakia.” The cover really acts as a poster of the book, a requirement formulated by Karel Teige, leader of Czech avant-garde, whose writings on typography are among the most noteworthy in Europe of the twenties. The layout of the covers of the four numbers were designed by typographer Zdeněk Rossmann and are char-acterized by a certain boldness. A large part is devoted to the white back-ground on which the words of the title and a photograph are arranged in neat composition. One could compare these covers with some book covers designed by Teige during twenties, but also with the covers that Rossmann designed for the review Index, published from 1929 in Brno. The purity of these covers puts forth the image of a dynamic review that offers forthright engagement with the stakes of modernity.

In addition to formal considerations, the title of the magazine begs a question of a linguistic order. Why Nová Bratislava , that is to say “New Bratislava”? The choice of the title links the review with editorial activity in Germany, where during the twenties magazines, that highlighted art and architecture, were published carrying similar titles: Das Neue Frankfurt , Das

Neue Berlin , Das Neue München, etc. It is Das Neue Frankfurt that began the trend in 1926: the magazine was directed by Ernst May, the architect



leading new housing development in Frankfurt am Main. The original intent of the magazine, as indicated by the subtitle during the fi rst year of publication, was to be a “monthly magazine addressing issues relating to the creation of a big city” (my translation from the German). However, starting with the second year of publication, the subtitle became: “monthly magazine for the problems of modern creation” (my translation from the German). Das Neue Frankfurt sticks to an idea formulated by Le Corbusier that “big cities are spiritual ateliers where the work of the world is built” (my translation from the French). 9 Das Neue Frankfurt was meant to be evidence of this concept. The same is true for the ephemeral magazine Das Neue Berlin (two numbers in 1929) edited by Martin Wagner, architect and town planner of Big Berlin. In a German context, marked by strong support of the expansion of cities that caused an unsurpassed impulse for construction, these magazines worked as tools of propaganda for the pro-gressivist’s mind. Topics approached in the articles address specifi c urban problems (such as the social dimension of city architecture or urban adver-tising approached as an economic element structuring the metropolis) and the domains that are linked to them to varying degrees (such as theater 10 or sports 11 ). These articles were concerned with present and future masses as they strove to demonstrate the wealth of the urban laboratory with its eminently modern character.

Members of the editorial team of Nová Bratislava surely had a very good knowledge of the German periodicals that inspired their title. Rossmann worked for the Czech modernist magazine Index, in which record can be found of Das Neue Berlin and Das Neue Frankfurt . 12 The magazine Nová

Bratislava, the publication of which didn’t begin until 1931, is without any doubt connected to this consequently international emulation. Its title is moreover trilingual: Nová Bratislava—Das Neue Bratislava—La Nouvelle

Bratislava . The multilingualism of the magazine does not limit itself to its title: within its pages were articles in Slovak, Czech, and German. This cosmopolitanism was not new to Czechoslovakia: the magazines of the Czech avant-garde in the twenties had a similar tone. It should be remembered that the fi rst deliveries of the magazine Pásmo, published by Brno’s section of Devětsil in 1924, were titled: Pásmo — Die Zone — La Zone . And it is not mere coincidence that the graphic designer of Pásmo, Zdeněk Rossmann, became the graphic designer for Nová Bratislava . Rossmann studied architecture in Brno when he worked for Pásmo and later for Index . He then left to study in the Bauhaus in Dessau (in 1930)



where he could understand in depth the stakes of the New Typography and be reinforced in his modern positions. His learning translated bril-liantly into the layout of the Slovak magazine, where the economy of the graphic means and their modernity (for instance, systematic call to the



photography and appeal in the diagram) allowed Rossmann to conceive the works of which our eye appreciates the beauty. The role of Rossmann in the publication of Nová Bratislava should be given signifi cant consid-eration: though he was part of the editorial team, the possibility that he was the true originator of the magazine is worth of consideration since many of the articles are dedicated to architectural matters and to subja-cent social themes, a topic of extreme importance for the international constructivist avant-garde. 13 So, in the fi rst number of the magazine, a “Typomontage” by Rossmann introduces the problems of Slovak tradi-tional architecture and the threat of its disappearance caused by a badly applied standardization. Other articles in the same number, and in the following numbers, analyze architectural problems on the national or even international scale. The members of the editorial team frequently reported on the hardship of the Slovak people, an unusual practice for an avant-garde periodical. 14 Within the pages of the magazine, space is also given to poetry, music, theatre . . . provided that works are rooted in the territory of the country. Some articles are openly polemic: the subject of present-day life discussed throughout the issues was a sensitive question for the Slovak National Theatre. The illustrations in the review displayed modern painting in Slovakia with pictures by Ludovit Fulla and Mikulas Galanda in the third issue, and Frantisek Maly in the fourth issue where one can see a picture by Max Ernst as well.

Finally, it seems that the magazine Nová Bratislava shows a notable difference in comparison with its German counterparts: its ambition exceeds the borders of the city. It is the magazine “for the new Slovakia,” 15 the self-proclaimed voice of the country. In the geographic representation of Czechoslovakia, which is systematically drawn on the cover, Bratislava is represented by a dot that is an integral part of the typography of title. This dot refers irrefutably to other numerous dots of the same style that appeared recurrently in the publications of the constructivist avant-garde in the twenties. However, it is not so much a dot as a disc of color. This disc became the ideograph of the Czech group Devětsil, as evidenced by the covers of almanacs, 16 books, 17 and the title of one of its magazines ( Disk , 1923–25). On the map of Czechoslovakia drawn by Rossmann on the cover of Nová Bratislava , there are no other dots / discs suggesting the possi-ble presence of other comparable cities: at the dawn of the thirties, would Bratislava have been the only place where modernity was still present?



n ová bratislava —a document about the last bastion of an international movement?

By comparing the publication dates of publication Nová Bratislava with those of other magazines, the year 1931 appears to be the hinge in the edito-rial activity of the constructivist avant-garde. It corresponds to the mutation of the editorial team of the initiator magazine Das Neue Frankfurt, which becomes Das neue Stadt under the new direction of Joseph Gantner. Also, strangely, the last number of the magazine of Karel Teige ReD also dates from 1931. ReD was, as the name points out, the magazine of Devětsil. Its name is in effect an anagram of the words Review and Devětsil, which allows it, in English, to refer to the emblematic red color of the communist revolution. It was started in 1928 and was published regularly. ReD syn-thesized all clear ideological concerns of the Czech avant-garde, which reg-istered with the international movement. It was a stage for international constructivism, of which Teige became a spokesman. The ideas defended on the pages of his magazine are of the same order as those which are dis-played in Nová Bratislava . On top of this, Teige contributes to number two of the Slovak magazine with his short article on the competition of buildings with small fl ats to rent for the corporation Včela in Prague, 18 a competition in which Rossmann participated as architect. Teige comes back on the prob-lems of the minimal accommodation, which preoccupied him at the end of the twenties and at the beginning of the thirties. 19 By inserting the article by Teige into Nová Bratislava , its editors created an obvious link with the Czech avant-garde group, or with what remained of it: in effect, at the beginning of the thirties, Devětsil moved away progressively from constructivism to join the surrealist movement. While this slow dissolution of Devětsil was taking place in Prague, it was in Bratislava that a progressive group was built around the magazine Nová Bratislava . This group was ever turning its gaze toward Germany (from which Rossmann had just come) and tried to mark this affi liation by several means. It was a question of bringing back the torchlight of the modernity by means of editorial activity but also by that of education. The main actors of the Slovak avant-garde were active within the circle enlarged by school ŠUR (School of Arts and Crafts).

This school was founded in 1928 by the Association of the Slovak Artists and supported by the Chamber of Commerce of Bratislava and by its municipality. Its fi rst objective was to give a continuing education (with



evening lessons) to professional artisans and interior decorators. From its beginning, the school was receptive to the Bauhaus model. Indeed, Josef Vydra, the director of the school, met Josef Albers as early as 1929 during the Congress of Artistic Education organized in Prague. In the years following, Vydra maintained a correspondence with his professor from Bauhaus. 20 When in 1930 the school moved into new large buildings con-structed according to the precepts of “Neues Bauen,” it also increased its scope by giving lessons during the day reserved for young adults and extra-curricular lessons for children from ages eight to fourteen. It was not until 1930 that ŠUR came to full fruition and was greeted unanimously by the press. The professorial body became rich with newcomers who already had certain notability in the progressive artistic sphere. It was above all Zdeněk Rossmann (April 1931) in whom was entrusted the workshop of typogra-phy, but also Jaromír Funke who was recruited to teach photography. 21 At the time when Bauhaus closed its doors in Dessau (which represented the beginning of its end), journalist Josef Rybák introduced school ŠUR in the magazine DAV as “Bauhaus of Bratislava.” 22 Nine months after this statement, the fi rst number of Nová Bratislava came into being, evok-ing by its layout the spirit of German modernist reviews. Nová Bratislava aimed to establish itself as somewhat of an extension of the school ŠUR in the eyes of an international public (as is somewhat indicated by its offer-ing a foreign subscription rate). The major contributors to the magazine were the professors of the school or its founders—Rossmann of course, but also Antonin Hořejš (an editor of the magazine who wrote articles on various subjects and who, besides Vydra, was a key founder of the school) and Jaromir Funke who provided most of the photographic pictures used by Rossmann in the layout. In the fourth issue of the magazine, Funke gives an interview about the state and stakes of modern photography. He differentiates between photography exhibited in salons, which is “conser-vative” and “easy,” and photography made by the international avant-garde, which is “inventive.” This inventive character is, however, relative since it was working with some very rigid forms, such as diagonal view, that were defi ned by Rodchenko and the Bauhaus movement. Funke’s architecture plates follow closely the aesthetics of constructivist photography: composi-tion based on the diagonal to acquire a dynamic effect, as seen in low-angle shots to idealize the buildings or when “skimming the façade” to raise the sensuality of wall surfaces devoid of ornaments.



Years 1931–32 correspond to the critical period in the defi nition of the Slovak avant-garde, which is closely linked to the constructivist muta-tion of the school ŠUR. Rossmann undoubtedly played a major role in this process. 23 As an alumni of the Bauhaus in Dessau, he brought what they expected from him in Bratislava: a strong fi rm belief in modernity, solid theoretical lectures, and a young energy that was supported by a strong network of knowledgeable friends and acquaintances. The school saw visits from László Moholy-Nagy, Jan Tschichold, Hannes Meyer (who also contributed to Nová Bratislava ), 24 Karel Teige, Ladislav Sutnar, and František Kalivoda for conferences and exhibitions. In 1938, Rossmann initiated a major reform of ŠUR, which consisted of the opening of pre-parative classes following the example of those of Bauhaus. But histori-cal events did not allow the realization of this project and the school was closed by political authorities after the foreign professors (Czechs) were sent back to their country, which included the director Josef Vydra and the professor Zdeněk Rossmann. In spite of the sad and foreseeable end of this story, the avant-garde in Bratislava lived a few happy years at a time when in Germany and the Soviet Union the situation of modern radical artists became more and more diffi cult. Bratislava was spotted as a place of possible freedom: as proof there are the letters of Gyula Pap and Josef Albers, who were trying to acquire a posts in the school ŠUR after Bauhaus was defi nitely liquidated. The magazine Nová Bratislava , though its publication was short, pointed out this place of freedom: Rossmann had not made a mistake by drawing the map of Czechoslovakia on the cover of the magazine and by indicating the geographical situation of the city by the only big dot. It was designed so that other modern men could fi nd Bratislava without getting lost. When publication of the review ended, some other magazines closely related to the school ŠUR continued to diffuse modernist ideals with attention devoted to the specifi c folkloric heritage of the Slovak culture. 25

For us, today, the magazine represents material proof of vital artistic activity in the Slovak capital. The quality of the layout and the free- spokenness that characterized the texts of Nová Bratislava encourage us to be more interested in this multicultural Slovak avant-garde that, in the thirties in Bratislava, tried to follow the work begun some years before by the progressive groups of neighboring countries. This avant-garde is still far from having delivered to us all its secrets.



notes

1. For instance, the exhibition Central European Avant-gardes: Exchange and Transformation, 1910–1930, which showed in Berlin, Munich, and Los Angeles, “consider[ed] the locations where artists and writers worked to be ‘exchange sites,’ venues of varying degrees of isolation and cosmopolitanism where artistic idioms, styles, ideologies, and languages were debated, embraced, dismissed, and modifi ed” did not succeed in resolving this problem and indeed introduced a subtle geographical hierarchy. Timothy O. Benson, ed., Central European Avant-gardes: Exchange and Transformation, 1910–1930 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002), 16. 2. Much of this scholarly work was accomplished by Czech researchers Karel Srp, Lenka Bydzovska, Jindrich Toman, Jaroslav Andel, Rostislav Svacha, Iva Janakova, and others. Their theses were developed in different periodicals, catalogues of exhibitions, and other scholarly publications, with much dedicated to the illustration, which helps readers reconstruct the creative atmosphere in Prague in the twenties. 3. The only public library that has all four issues of the magazine is the Slovak National Library in Martin (Slovakia). In Bratislava, it is possible to fi nd the last number (4) in the Library of the University. 4. See the catalogue of exhibition Prague, capital secrète des avant-gardes , Dijon, 1993. 5. Tomas Strauss showed how Bratislava could “not become automatically the center of cultural life in Slovakia” in the beginning of twenties. See Tomas Straus, Slovensky variant moderny (Bratislava: Pallas, 1992), 13–16. 6. The dead-line fi xed for March 26, 1932. Nová Bratislava (March 1932), inside cover. 7. My translation of the note that appears on the fi rst page of every number of Nová Bratislava . 8. Sonia de Puineuf, “Au commencement était l’alphabet: avant-garde internationale en quête de la langue universelle,” Cahiers du MNAM , 102 (January 2008) 36–63. 9. Le Corbusier, L’Urbanisme (Paris: G. Crès, 1925). 10. Das Neue Frankfurt 2 (February 1928), the coverage of which is devoted to Piscator. 11. Das Neue Frankfurt 4 (January 1930). 12. See especially Index 11 (1929) and Index 1 (1930). 13. The German modernist architects (movement “Neues Bauen”) and its foreign equiva-lents (like architects from “Levá Fronta” in Czechoslovakia) were preoccupied by the question of social fl ats. 14. Daniel Okali, “Bieda na Dornkappli a Podhradi” (The hardship in the quartiers of Dornkappel and Podhradie”), Nová Bratislava (December 1931), 25–29. 15. In one of his letters (September 22, 1931), Funke mentions his fi rst photographic work for the magazine Nové Slovensko ( New Slovakia ) contracted by Rossmann, Hořejš, and Weinwurm. It shows that the title of the magazine was changed very late—just some weeks before its publishing. See Jaromír Funke (1896–1945): průkopník fotografi cké avantgardy (Brno: Moravská Galerie, 1996), 62. 16. Starting with the founder almanac Devětsil (Prague, 1922). 17. Rossmann used the motif of the disc as the only “ornament” in his designing of a page of a book on Adolf Loos; Karl Marilaun, Evropan Adolf Loos (Brno, 1929). A playful interpretation of the disc is given by Vit Obrtel on the cover of the book Akrobat (a collection of poems by Vítězslav Nezval) where the motif of the disc becomes confused with that of the hoop, which is linked to the letter ‘O’ of the title itself. Vítězslav Nezval , Akrobat (Prague: Rudolf Škeřík, 1927). 18. Karel Teige, “Ksoutěži na nájemné domy s malými byty pro dělnický spolek Včela v Praze,” Nová Bratislava (December 1931), 35. 19. See for instance Karel Teige, Nejmenší byt (Prague: Vaclav Petr, 1932). 20. See Iva Mojžišová, “Škola umelckých remesiel v Bratislave a Bauhaus,” Ars—pramene moderného slovenského výtvarného umenia (Bratislava: SAV, 1990), 43– 44. 21. Some interesting letters by Funke on this subject were published by Antonin Dufek, ed., Jaromír Funke—průkopník fotografi cké avantgardy (Brno: Moravská Galerie, 1996), 205.



22. Josef Rybák, “Bratislavský Bauhaus,” Dav (February 1931). 23. The coming of Rossmann to ŠUR could be likened to that of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy to Bauhaus of Dessau in 1923. In both cases, these young men represented a breath of fresh air for both institutions. 24. Hannes Meyer, “beyruth,” Nová Bratislava (March 1932), 79. 25. Especially the review Výtvarná výchova , 1935– 40. This review was edited by Josef Vydra and Zdeněk Rossmann was responsible for its layout.


A Dot on the Map: Some Remarks on the Magazine NovÃ¡ Bratislava

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