Wachsman studied architecture at the Technical University in Prague from 1917 to 1922, and then from 1925 to 1928 at the Academy of Fine Arts [Akademie výtvarných umění v Praze] under Josef Gočár. In 1920 he was a co-founder of the avant-garde artists' association Devětsil, and in 1923 he became a member of the influential Mánes Association of Fine Artists in Prague, with whom he also exhibited regularly. His paintings are characterised by distinctive poetic sentiments, initially inspired by French Cubism and later by the fantasy aesthetic of Surrealism. The development of Surrealism in Czechoslovakia between 1934 and 1938 was similar to that of Cubism in Austria-Hungary between 1912 and 1914. Prior to the First World War, there was a group of artists in Bohemia for whom Cubism was their primary agenda, while at the same time many other artists, both within and outside the group, took inspiration from Cubism.
In a similar way, in the 1930s in Czechoslovakia, the Surrealist Group was founded by artists who were completely dedicated to Surrealism and who looked down on other artists who merely experimented with Surrealist techniques. One of the artists who were outside the "core group" was Alois Wachsman, who created monumental pictorial compositions which often alluded to classical mythology but were filled with ambiguous everyday objects and set in a strange nocturnal moonlit landscape, as in the painting Myjící se Oidipus [Oedipus Washing Himself] from 1935. Towards the end of his life, however, his work took on a more realistic tone, with predominantly religious themes.
He designed stage scenery for the Prague avant-garde theatre Osvobozené divadlo [Liberated Theatre], which was founded in 1925 as the theatre section of the Devětsil. From 1927 to 1930, Alois Wachsman worked with his former professor at the Academy, the architect Josef Gočár, on the design of the Church of St Wenceslas in Prague-Vršovice, which is still considered one of the most important works of Czech Functionalism and is strongly influenced by Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus.
The large-scale Surrealist paintings by Alois Wachsman, with their a dark monochrome backgrounds and a sometimes almost biomorphic morphology, form an interesting historical parallel to the compositions of Marek Meduna in this exhibition.
OEDIPUS WASHING HIMSELF, 1935
b. 1898 in Prague
d. 1942 in Jičín, Czechoslovakia (under German occupation)