Jan Kotěra

Biography

Architect Jan Kotěra has been known as the “founder of modern Czech architecture”. We may ask why, but the important thing is that the Kotěra-founder’s myth was embraced by the generation of his pupils and the interwar avant-garde that professed his legacy. Jaromír Krejcar wrote in Kotěra’s obituary: “The secret of his school and its vitality is that it never produced willing or forced [...] epigons. Kotěra’s name is now again on the shield of the youngest generation of artist.” [1].

Jan Kotěra was born in Brno and he studied an architectural vocational school in Pilsen. After graduation, he met Josef Mladota of Solopysky and designed the rennovation of his chateau in Červená Lhota near Sedlčany; Mladota later financially supported him during his studies in Vienna. Kotěra studied in Otto Wagner’s studio at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna between 1894 and 1897. In the studio, he also met important representatives of the Vienna Secession – Josef Maria Olbrich, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann (later, a representative of the Wiener Werkstätte), Jože Plečnik from Slovenia, and his compatriot Leopold Bauer. Although Kotěra thought highly of Wagner, he soon had to abandon his principles of universal modern architecture, like many other graduates of the school. Architectural historian Jindřich Vybíral wrote: “Wagner taught young artists to be greatly reserved about their wish to use artistic means to express and create national or local originality [because] he promoted the universal language of modern architecture, corresponding to the common Western culture and technical achievements.” [2]

Kotěra’s diploma project of the ideal classicist town of Calais, contrasting Wagner’s grid of a universal city and based on the concept of a classicist star, won the so-called Rome Prize. In 1897, Kotěra went to Italy to study classical architecture. When he returned to Prague, he first worked as a temporary (1898), and then a permanent professor of architecture after Friedrich Ohmann. Between 1902 and 1905, Kotěra, influenced by the interest in folk culture inspired by the Jubilee Ethnographic Exhibition in 1895, designed a number of buildings using variations of folk ornaments and traditional materials. The projects included Jan and Božena Herben’s weekend house, František Trmal’s villa, the villa of František Fröhlich, and the National House in Prostějov (1905–1907). At the same time, Kotěra developed a type of metropolitan house with floral Art Nouveau decorations such as the house of František and Lev Peterka in Wenceslas Square in Prague (1899–1900) and the District House in Hradec Králové (1901–1904). Around 1908, Kotěra turned to modernism. He designed utilitarian workers’ housing for the railway colony in Louny and his own large house in Hradešínská Street, Prague–Vinohrady, which had no Art Nouveau decorations or national Renaissance features. The exterior of the massive stair tower was designed as an empty, abstract space with lesenes of light brickwork and rough plaster. The tower was adjacent to a cubic form with a tented roof whose internal layout was based on current knowledge of the rationalization of the living space. In his villa, Kotěra had his architectural studio and architectural school he founded at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1910.

At that time, he also began to work on the project of a museum building in Hradec Králové, considered an example of the greatest synthesis of Kotěra’s principles: modern historicism and efforts to refine and abstract the architectural space. Between 1910 and 1914, Kotěra designed public and residential buildings. According to his theory, their function and resulting structures should be “space structures”, simplifying and synthesizing the principles of Gottfried Semper, Karl Bötticher and Otto Wagner [3]. Kotěra’s objectivity can be seen in the design of Laicher’s house in Prague–Vinohrady and Vilém Charvát’s villa in Vysoké Mýto. However, Kotěra never abandoned his metropolitan monumental style as manifested in the General Pension Institute building in Prague with cubist features. He also liked modern classicism, used primarily in the designs for his Jewish clientele: the duplex for the Mandelík brothers in Ratboř near Kolín and Lemberg-Gombrich villa in Vienna.

During World War I, Kotěra was exempted from military service because he ensured the functioning of the state as the Royal and Imperial Building Counsel and due to his worsening mental illness. During the war, he designed mainly funeral and memorial architecture he worked on occasionally already at the beginning of his career. In 1918, he was accused of collaborating with the defeated Austrian-Hungarian Empire, yet he was allowed to participate in several prestigious projects: the project of the Law Faculty he had worked on since 1908 – the construction of which was prevented by the conservative heir to of the throne, Franz Ferdinand d ‘Este, before WWI [4] – was renewed, and he also designed the government complex in Petrská čtvrť District, the headquarters of Ringhoffer’s factory in Prague–Smíchov, the municipal house in Hradec Králové, and the headquarters of the Vítkovice Metallurgical Mining Company. Only the last two projects were built. At that time, Kotěra, like architects in Vienna, was more inclined to monumental forms and the forms of modern historicism. Kotěra died of lung disease at the age of fifty two. The Kotěra-founder’s myth began to be built the next day by Zdeněk Wirth who wrote in Kotěra’s obituary: “[he was] the great founder of Czech modern architecture of his own will and thanks to his favourable fate”. [5]

LZL

Notes

[1] Jaromír Krejcar, Jan Kotěra, Stavba, year 1923–1924, vol. II, pp. 4–7

[2] Jindřich Vybíral, Regionalismus jako umělecký program a tržní strategie. Josef Hoffmann a Leopold Bauer na severní Moravě a ve Slezsku, Bulletin Moravské galerie v Brně, vol. 2005, no. 51, pp. 97–102, cit. pp. 98

[3] Kotěra formulated his theoretical ideas in his early and almost the only one article in Volné směry magazine he edited at that time. Jan Kotěra, O novém umění, Volné směry, vol. 1900, IV., no. 4, pp. 189–195

[4] It was completed after Kotěra’s death by his closest collaborator Ladislav Machoň between 1926 and 1930.

[5] Zdeněk Wirth, Jan Kotěra, České slovo, vol. 1923, No. 18. 4. 1923, unpaginated.

Other Works

1894–1896
Reconstruction of Červený Hrádek château for Jan Mladota of Solopysky

1898
Family tomb of the Mladota family of Solopysky, Kosova Hora

1899–1900
Peterka’s house façade in Prague, 12 Wenceslas Square

1902
Jan Herben’s villa, Hostišov no. 11

1902
Karel a Naděžda Kramář’s “Barbo Kristo” villa in Crimea

1902–1903
Fröhlich’s villa in Černošice, 360 Střední Street

1902–1903
Mácha’s villa in Bechyně, 188 Libušina Street

1902–1903
Trmal’s villa in Prague–Strašnice, 11 Vilová Street

1903–1905
Pumping station of Vršovice waterworks in Prague–Braník, 229 Modřanská Street

1904–1907
Stanislav Sucharda’s villa and studio in Prague, 248 Slavíčkova Street

1905–1906
František Tonder’s villa in Sankt Gilgen, 146 Lienbachweg Street

1905–1907
National House in Prostějov, 218 Vojáčkovo náměstí Square

1906–1907
Vršovice waterwarks in the Zelená Liška housing estate, 365 Baarova Street

1909–1913
City Museum in Hradec Králové, 465 Eliščino Embankment

1907
Kraus’s villa in Prague, 208 Sibiřské náměstí Square

1907–1908
Götz’s villa in Chrustenice, no. 52

1908–1910
Mark’s villa at 123 Holoubkova Street

1908–1909
Laichter’s publishing a residential house in Prague–Vinohrady, 1543 Chopinova Street

1908–1909
Kotěra’s villa in Prague–Vinohrady, 1542 Hradešínská Street

1908–1910
Emil Kratochvíl’s villa in Černošice, no. 282

1909
Water tower in Třeboň, Na Kopečku Street

1909–1911
Vilém Charvát’s villa in Vysoké Mýto, 247 Rokycanova Street

1908–1911
Railway colony in Louny

1910–1913
Reconstruction of Villa Bianca in Prague–Bubeneč, 49 Pod kaštany Street

1910–1911
Family duplex of Josef Groha and Otokar Borůvka, 239 and 240 Mickiewiczova Street

1911–1913
Duplex villa, the so-called new palace of the Mandelík brothers, Ratboř no. 40

1911–1913
Urbánek’s publishing house, the so-called Mozarteum in Prague, 748 Jungmannova Street

1912–1915
Reconstruction of the old chateau in Ratboř, no. 1

1912–1914
General Pension Institute in Prague, 390 Rašínovo nábřeží Embankment (with Josef Zasch who designed the interior layout)

1913–1915
Lemberg-Gombrich villa in Vienna, 50–52 Grinzinger Allee

1921–1924
Building of the Vítkovice Mining and Metallurgical Company in Prague, 1419 Politických vězňů Street

1926–1930
Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague, náměstí Curieových Square (with Ladislav Machoň)

Literature

[b. a.], Otázky dne, Socialistické listy, roč. 1918, č. 40, vydání 1. 1. 1918, nepag.
[b. a.], Návrhy a provedené stavby Jana Kotěry od roku 1900–1921, Styl, 1921–1922, roč. II. (VII.), s. 94–95
Antonín Matějček, Jan Kotěra, Národní listy, 1923, roč. 63, č. 18. 4. 1923, ranní vydání, s. 1–2
Jaroslav B. Svrček, Architekt Jan Kotěra, Host, 1923, roč. II., s. 314–318
Zdeněk Wirth, Jan Kotěra, České slovo, 1923, č. 18. 4. 1923, nepag.
[b. a.] Jan Kotěra, Volné směry, roč. 1923–1924, roč. XXII., s. 81–82
Jaromír Krejcar, Jan Kotěra, Stavba, roč. 1923–1924, svazek II., s. 4–7
Zdeněk Wirth, Jan Kotěra, Styl, 1925–1926, roč. VI. (XI.), s. 147
[b. a.], Z dopisů Jana Kotěry svému příteli R. G. ve Vídni, Stavitel, roč. 1926, roč. VI., č. 8–9, s. 63–65
Josef Šusta, Z italských dopisů Jana Kotěry se vzpomínkovým úvodem Jos. Šusty, Umění, Sborník pro českou výtvarnou práci, roč. 1931, roč. IV., s. 113–128, 269–275, 313–316, 356–358
Jan Kotěra, Data k projektu pro Právnickou a Theologickou fakultu české university, Styl, roč. 1931, č. 9–10, s. 93.
Karel Polívka, Jan Kotěra, Časopis českých architektů, 1932, 17. 5. 1932, č. 4–5, s. 64–65
Zdeněk Wirth, Jan Kotěra – kreslíř, Umění, roč. 1943, roč. XV, s. 253–270
Rostislav Švácha, Poznámky ke Kotěrovu muzeu, Umění, 1986, roč. 34, s. 171–179
Rostislav Švácha, Lemberger-Gombrich villa in Vienna by Jan Kotěra, Umění, roč. 1994, roč. XLII, č. 5–6, s. 388–392
Vladimír Šlapeta et al., Jan Kotěra: 1871–1923: Zakladatel moderní české architektury, Praha 2001
Martin Strakoš, Jan Kotěra – protagonista moderny a zakladatelského mýtu, Stavba, roč. 2002, roč. č. 1, s. 3–4
Josef Chochol, Nekrolog k úmrtí Jana Kotěry, Architekt, roč. 2003, č. 12, s. 75–80
Klára Zubíková; Ladislav Jouza, Rodina Mandelíků a architekt Jan Kotěra, in: Kol. aut. Židé v Kolíně a okolí, Kolín 2005
Hana Hermanová et al., Rodinné domy Jana Kotěry, Praha 2011
[Richard Biegel], Chrám vzdělání a vědy, in: Kol.aut., Cesty filosofie a práva 1882–1912, Praha 2012
Jakub Potůček, Kotěra: Po stopách moderny, Hradec Králové 2013
Kol. aut., Jan Kotěra: Jeho učitelé, doba a žáci: Sborník textů Mezinárodní konference k výstavě Kotěra. Po stopách moderny, Hradec Králové 2013
Ladislav Zikmund-Lender; Jiří Zikmund (eds.), Budova muzea v Hradci Králové: 1909–1913: Jan Kotěra, Hradec Králové 2013
Ladislav Zikmund-Lender, Jan Kotěra v Hradci / Jan Kotěra in Hradec, Hradec Králové 2016

Kam?