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Artistic Forum [Czech. Umelecká Beseda].
Czech society of artists, literary figures and musicians, active from 1863 to 1973. Founded in 1863 with the objective of establishing a unified national programme with which artists in different fields would be associated, its most active section became the Artists Group (Vytvarny), which brought together the outstanding contemporary figures in Czech art. Its first president was Josef Mánes (see MÁNES, (2)), and its early members included KAREL PURKYNE (see CZECH REPUBLIC, fig. 17) and the sculptor Václav Levy (1820–70). The group’s original participation in the National Reawakening reached its climax in the early 1880s, when it was involved in the building and the decoration of the National Theatre in Prague. In the 1890s Artistic Forum became conservative and lost its earlier significance: while younger Czech artists joined the MÁNES UNION OF ARTISTS, older ones seceded in 1898 and founded the Union of Artists (Jednota Umelcu Vytvarnych). In 1909 Artistic Forum was revivified by the new membership of VÁCLAV RABAS and Karel Bohácek, graduates of the Academy of Fine Arts, who were preoccupied with landscape painting and with social themes. They subsequently persuaded members of the so-called ‘Mayer Club’, whose leader was J. Jares, to join as well, the Club’s special interest being Slovakia’s history and traditions. From this time until the 1920s Artistic Forum underwent its period of greatest activity, organizing exhibitions, lectures and commemorative occasions. In 1914 Jares and B. Malthesius published the periodical Zivot a mythus (‘Life and myth’). After World War I Artistic Forum offered an alternative to the modernist and cosmopolitan hegemony of the Mánes Union of Artists. Various authors who espoused the national tradition joined the Forum, as did JAN ZRZAVY and JOSEF CAPEK, both of whom had been members of the Mánes Union for a short time. In 1921 the Forum began to publish the annual journal Zivot (‘Life’); from 1933 it was published monthly and acquired great prestige in the 1930s. From 1930 the Forum organized exhibitions of the work of such artists as Zrzavy, JOSEF SÍMA (see CZECH REPUBLIC, fig. 18) and De Chirico; Ecole de Paris, a show of contemporary Parisian art, was held in 1931. In the early 1940s, Frantisek Hudecek, Frantisek Gross and Václav Bostík, young members of the 42 Group, became members of the Forum. It survived the Communist putsch of 1948 in Czechoslovakia, but its activity was henceforth considerably limited. The Artistic Forum’s demise was officially announced at its centenary celebrations in 1963, but it was not until 1973 that it finally ceased to exist.
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