Ladislav Sutnar

Ladislav Sutnar studied graphic arts at the School of Applied Arts in Prague under F. Kysela. Already during his studies he designed wooden toys and collaborated with Artel, one of the most important associations of Czech applied art and design in the first half of the 20th century. Sutnar decided to devote himself to industrial design, and as a result his work became part of many households throughout Czechoslovakia. His goal was healthy and hygienic housing for the general population, and his designs sought to achieve such a state. He fundamentally influenced the development of product and graphic design, even on a global level. However, his role as a teacher, publicist and manager was also important. He was the director of the cultural and social organisation Družstevní práce and its corporate brand Krásná jizba. He was a teacher and later the director of the State Graphic School. He also greatly influenced exhibition and promotional work. He treated banal everyday objects as high art, staging them as works of art in impressive avant-garde compositions. The subject of modern toys and puppetry was important to Ladislav Sutnar. He believed that through ingenious, aesthetically sophisticated and precise toys he could not only positively influence the development of a child and thus educate a new modern generation, but above all he could mediate their first contact with art. He designed toys made of elementary geometric shapes with distinctive colours and colourful ornaments without unnecessary details. The choice of themes for Sutnar's toys was also innovative. Inspired by the movement of the modern big city of the 1920s, he designed a kit made of blocks with factory chimneys or toys based on the motifs of means of transport - trains, cars, trucks, steam cylinders or electric trams. The unique wooden kit of an industrial city with coloured blocks and chimneys represents Sutnar's most mature work in the field of modern toys. It was first created in the 1940s, but only as a prototype. It is being mass-produced today by the French toy company Vilac. On a monumental scale, it commemorates its creator in front of the Faculty of Design and Art of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, which bears Sutnar's name. As an admirer of puppet theatre, he designed characters for puppet shows as well as stage sets. In the spirit of Bauhaus, he designed several turned puppets for Artěl - the Knight, Kaspárek, the Robber and the Devil. Legendary, timeless and highly appreciated are also Sutnar's toys of stylized exotic animals on wheels from the 1930s. Thanks to their reproductions, generations of the youngest children can still enjoy Sutnar's toys with their exceptional designs today, a hundred years later. Barbora Kovářová