Technologies for the revolution: the Czech avant-garde in print

Abstract

"Technologies for the Revolution offers a cultural history of print that engages questions of labor and capital embedded in material culture and in the history of the book. This new publication offers a nuanced portrait of leftist art practices in Czechoslovakia in the interwar period and charts networks of exchange across Europe by exploring the ways in which Devětsil used its printed matter. The Czech -ism of Poetism is articulated as a sustained working through of Devětsil's position as the group aimed to accommodate both new technology and the role of poets and artists in a postwar society, all while striving for a socialist utopia. Technologies for the Revolution is the result of nearly a decade of research conducted in the libraries and archives of Prague, Berlin, Paris, and New York, as well as close work with museum and private collections. Conceived as an exhibition space in print, this book sheds new light on Devětsil and Poetism, as well as on the group's social and artistic activities through an object-based analysis of various media-- architecture, typography, poetry, photography, film, and performance--to propose a more synthetic and variegated understanding of Devětsil's unique contribution to the European avant-gardes"--From The University of Chicago Press website https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/T/bo257336328.html accessed 01/28/2026

Contents

Design in process : Photomechanical reproduction and the tools of the press as the building blocks of Avante-Garde print -- Pictures as poetry : the development of poetism through the text and image of Devĕtsil's early publications -- Films on paper : quotation and the genre of the film poem as an economical cinema -- The page is a stage : Devětsil's Osvobozené divadlo and iterations of performance in print -- Typophoto and typomontage : the apex of Devětsil design