Backside of a brochure of the exhibition, with all the posters shown
Dreaming - Czechoslovak film poster inspired by Surrealism from Terry's Socks poster collection
March 3, 2014 - May 20, 2015
Aero, Oko and Svetozor cinemas, Prague, Czech Republic
In the end of 1920’s the Czech
culture received a strong impulse from Surrealism. In the
time of the Protectorate and Stalinism that followed, surrealists
still worked in hiding. In the
more liberated 1960’s the Surrealist aesthetics became more
popularized and domesticated.
The film poster is proof of that.
The mysterious, ambiguous, often even existential symbo- lism of Surrealism refers to aspects which officially had no place in the life of an individual, or a society: dreams, nightmares, jeopardy, death.
Designers of film posters were allowed to work more or less freely with surrealist language within applied arts, with the exception of eroticism which became a victim of censorship.
Surrealism had the strongest impact on the Czech affichiste Josef Vyletal who got influenced by this movement even in his free creation. He is the author of the richest and finest collection of the Czechoslovak film posters inspired by Surrealism.
Karel Teissig and Karel Machalek were also influenced by Surrealist aesthetics, while other notable poster designers Milan Grygar, Karel Vaca, or Zdenek Ziegler got inspired by it only marginally.
Later on, this aesthetics could be traced in film posters by Zdenek Kaplan, Karel Laštovka, Zdenek Palcr and Jirí Svoboda whose works are also a part of the exhibited collection.
The exhibition Dreaming – Czechoslovak Film Poster Inspired by Surrealism will present over 100 posters in 3 Prague cinemas: Aero, Oko and Svetozor.
