The School of Arts and Crafts in Brno (1924–2024): Experimental Teaching Methods, Instructors, Students

The project (exhibition and scholarly catalogue) presents in six chronological stages the School of Arts and Crafts in Brno (now the Secondary School of Art and Design) from its founding up to the present.

The School of Arts and Crafts in Brno (Škola uměleckých řemesel – ŠUŘ), which was founded by the Chamber of Commerce and entrepreneurship in Brno in 1924, was intended to represent a specific modern alternative toward the extant – largely German-speaking – educational institutions of its type active in Moravia since the end of the 19th century, but also with respect to Prague’s UMPRUM and professionally analogous schools in Austria and Germany. The corps of instructors active at this Brno institution both during the First Republic and even the Nazi occupation in the 1940s deliberately focused on cultivating a modern local-cultural identity and artistic legacy that would form the linchpin between international modernism and Moravian regional traditions. Active at the School of Artistic Crafts as instructors were many significant creative personalities (e.g., Emanuel Hrbek, Josef Vydra, Petr Dillinger, Božena Rothmayerová-Horneková, Viktor Oppenheimer, Jaroslav Král, Karel Langer, Jan Lichtág, František Kalivoda, Zdeněk Rossmann, Antonín Jero, František Malý, Josef Vydra, Bohdan Lacina, Josef Šálek, Jindřich Svoboda, Karel Otto Hrubý, Marie Filippovová, Dalibor Chatrný, Pavel Dias, Vladimír Židlický, Jan Rajlich, Emanuel Ranný, Pavel Dvorský, Petr Veselý) and many successful graduates (František Povolný, Bohumír Matal, Ester Krumbachová, Inez Tuschnerová, Jiří Pelcl, Josef Daněk, Blahoslav Rozbořil, Václav Jirásek, Kateřina Šedá, Barbora Klímová to name only a few).

The project focuses on the scholarly examination of new or less-known moments from the past and present of the school, taken not only from the study of preserved works by significant instructors or graduates but equally from the archival holdings of the ŠUŘ, mapping not only the grand narrative of art history but also the quotidian educational procedures and instruction methods (textbooks, teaching aids, minutes from faculty meetings, etc.). Using small-scale, detail-focused digressions, it thus becomes possible to open, against a background of historic contexts, smaller theoretical soundings that could present a more nuanced and complex picture of the institution. These soundings will, alongside noting positive aspects and innovative approaches, also not avoid the critical or controversial situations of its past, and will focus no less on individual moments occurring outside of any canonical certainties. The project will be realised in autumn 2025 in the form of an extensive exhibition with a scholarly catalogue (Brno House of Arts).

Lada Hubatová-Vacková

David Bláha, Andrea Březinová, Lada Hubatová-Vacková, Iva Knobloch, Valéria Kršiaková, Kateřina Kuthanová, Johana Lomová, Vojtěch Märc, Pavla Pečinková, Terezie Petišková, Veronika Rollová, Tomáš Zapletal a další

Valéria Kršiaková, Matěj Majda, Lucia Zelenáková