Karel Teige

Who was Karel Teige?

Karel Teige was the major figure of the Czech avant-garde movement Devětsil in the 1920s, a graphic artist, photographer, and typographer. Teige also worked as an editor and graphic designer for Devětsil's monthly magazine ReD.

With evidently endless energy, Teige introduced modern art to Prague. Devětsil-sponsored exhibitions and events brought international avant-garde figures like Le Corbusier, Man Ray, Paul Klee, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Walter Gropius, among many others, to lecture and perform in Prague. Teige interpreted their work, sometimes literally, for the Czech audience. In his 1935 Prague lecture, André Breton paid tribute to his "perfect intellectual fellowship" with Teige and Nezval: "Constantly interpreted by Teige in the most lively way, made to undergo an all-powerful lyric thrust by Nezval, Surrealism can flatter itself that it has blossomed in Prague as it has in Paris."

Although not an architect, Teige was an articulate and knowledgeable architecture critic, an active participant in CIAM, and friends with Hannes Meyer, the second director of the Bauhaus.