Pavel Janák

Pavel Janák was born in 1883 in Vysočany, and studied architecture at the Czech and German technical schools in Prague under Josef Schulz and Josef Zítek, the main representatives of architectural historicism. However, he finished his studies with Otto Wagner in Vienna and from the late 1890s worked with Jan Kotěra. In both cases they were key promoters of modern architectural thinking. Pavel Janák also became part of this fundamental change of forms in architecture and design at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1907, he co-founded the Artěl art association, and together with Josef Gočár they also founded the Prague Art Workshops, which focused on the production of quality interior accessories, from furniture to porcelain and ceramics. It was the iconic jars, made of hard-fired stoneware, rendered mostly in white glaze, with colour used only to accentuate the edges, that became not only Janák's best-known work, but also a symbol of Czech Cubism and a model for designing utilitarian objects in the interwar Art Deco period. Janák's design work reflects the principle of reduction of the then popular ornament, which had persisted in the decoration of products from the Art Nouveau and earlier periods. However, this reduction is not a rationalisation and reduction of matter into functional elements, as is common in Arts and Crafts and Arts and Crafts products after the mid-1920s. On the contrary, matter becomes an ornament in itself and literally crystallizes as an intellectualized elementality of form. This rule manifests itself in the mostly rotationally symmetrical vessels, which resemble crystals in themselves, whose literally natural regularity is disturbed only by expressive anomalies, usually brought out in colour and necessary for the utility of the object, such as funnels, handles or eyelets. The expressiveness is then enhanced by the colour lines, usually applied in an alternating zig-zag pattern.Janák also develops this expressiveness used in tableware in furniture, where it is most evident in the dramatic morphology of the cubist chair, but he is the author of many other pieces, from bedrooms to sofas to desks.

In architecture in the pre-war period Pavel Janák realized similarly simplified decorations of the arches of the Hlávka Bridge and especially of the Fáro House in Pelhřimov. Already during the war, when construction is fundamentally limited and most architects have the opportunity to develop their theoretical considerations, he begins to prefer a less radical geometry in architectural morphology, when sharp edges representing the dynamics of natural forces are replaced by softer, rounded shapes and combined use of colour. This architectural style is developed in the post-war period as so-called rondokubism or national style, as it becomes one of the fundamental architectural expressions in the representation of the new republic, especially in public buildings, which also become Janák's key domain at that time. Most notable in this sense are the Škoda and Adria Palaces in Prague's Jungmannova Street and the Pardubice Crematorium. In 1928, Pavel Janák would still formally return to a cubist expression in architecture when he designed the Libeň Bridge, but functionalist architecture (Hotel Juliš, the Huss Choir in Vinohrady) and urban planning (the Baba settlement) or reconstruction (the Ballroom, the Riding Hall and the Presidential House of Prague Castle, and the Hvězda Summerhouse) would come to dominate his work. Josef Holeček