Topičův Salon

First established in 1894 as the exhibition gallery for the bookstore owner and publisher František Topič (1858–1941), the Topičův Salon was a central cultural site in Prague for the display of young avant-garde artists, especially until the Second World War.

Initially situated in the Prague Insurance building on what is now Národní třída (National Boulevard), the Salon moved next door in 1906 to the Topič building, occupying a room that features a modern glasswork ceiling. Exhibition activities began in 1894 and featured many artist members from the Mánes Association, an artist’s society formed in 1887 by a group of Czech art students that included Mikoláš Aleš, Zdenka Brounerová, and Antonín Slavíček. Important presentations included a 1918 solo show for Jan Zrzavý and, in 1925, the first solo show of Josef Šíma, who lived primarily in Paris, where he served as a correspondent for the leftist Czech avant-garde group Devětsil. While the salon was initially associated with an older, more conservative set of artists, a 1921 show included several young members of Devětsil, including the architect Jaromír Krejcar and painter Jindřich Štyrský. By 1930, the salon—with its more experimental and progressive artist roster—provided a platform for dissent against the more established Mánes Association.

After the death of Topič’s son and heir, Jaroslav, in 1936, the Topič publishing house was acquired by Jaroslav Stránský, the owner of the preeminent paper Lidové noviny. A major exhibition of Štyrský and Toyen’s new Artificialist paintings—a label that the duo used to describe their abstract paintings and for which they published a manifesto in the first issue of the Devětsil magazine, ReD,in October 1927—took place at the Salon in 1938. The publishing house František Borový released a monograph alongside the exhibition, with texts by the poet Vítězslav Nezval and the artist Karel Teige, that catalogued the nearly two hundred works exhibited by Štyrský and Toyen from the 1920s and 1930s, nearly all of them held in private collections. Aside from fellow Devětsil artists and other Czech collectors, notable collections listed included those of prominent French Surrealists who Toyen and Štyrský had met and befriended in Paris, such as, André and Jacqueline Breton, Paul Eluard, and Philippe Soupault.

The activities of the Topičův Salon largely ceased during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia from 1938 to 1945. While exhibitions returned in the postwar period, such as the major 1947 presentation Mezinárodní Surrealismus (International Surrealism), by 1949 the Topič publishing house was liquidated. As of 2021, the Topičův Salon Society is located at Jilská 14.