Josef Capek

Born Mar. 23, 1887, in Hronov; died Apr. 1945, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Czech artist and writer; antifascist. Representative of progressive Czech art.

Čapek studied at the School of Industrial Arts in Prague and in Paris. His first works, which he wrote jointly with his brother K. Čapek, were published in 1907. From 1910 through the 1920’s he worked for progressive newspapers and journals, wrote critical articles and topical satires, and drew caricatures for the Brno newspaper Národni novini.

As an artist, Čapek strove for expressiveness and simplicity, introducing devices of cubism, fauvism, and primitivism. In his paintings he depicted the life of the urban poor, as in Man With a Bag (1926, National Gallery, Prague). He drew illustrations, including drawings, lithographs, and linocuts of laconic composition for works by Czech writers, including his brother’s novels The Absolute at Large (1922) and Krakatit (1924) and his own Tale of a Dog and a Cat (1929).

Čapek combined subtle irony and the grotesque with dramatic force. In the cycles of paintings Fire and Dream (1938–39, National Gallery, Prague), he symbolically depicted the suffering of his people during the fascist dictatorship. His series of antifascist caricatures see the with passionate anger.