Karel Teige

Born in Prague at the turn of the century, Karel Teige joined the Devětsil (Butterbur) movement in the 1920s, becoming one of its leading figures and working as an editor and graphic designer for ReD, its monthly magazine. During these years, he came into contact in Prague with artists and architects including Le Corbusier, Man Ray, Paul Klee, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Walter Gropius, and became one of the key figures in the avant-garde exchange between Paris and Prague. He participated in the CIAM (International Congresses of Modern Architecture) and established himself as an architecture critic. A close friend of Hannes Meyer, he was also invited to lecture at the Bauhaus in Dessau. In 1932, he published The Minimum Dwelling, a book in which he brought together his ideas on architecture. After the Second World War, he initially welcomed the Soviet presence and the political changes it brought, but the new Communist government soon condemned him as a Trotskyist and suppressed his work. His papers were subsequently destroyed by the secret police.

Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky) / Vladimir Mayakovsky / Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) / Paul Klee / Walter Gropius