Poetism

Its poems were apolitical, optimistic, emotional, and proletaristic, describing ordinary, real things and everyday life, dealing mainly with the present time.

Poetism in early phase introduced to Czech art and synthesized Cubo-Futurism, Dadaism and Constructivism.

Poetist's works are mainly featured by programmatic optimism, playfulness, humour, lyricism, sensuality, imagination, orientation toward pure art, a multiplicity of themes, and emphasis on associations.

By 1923, Devětsil had their activity entered a transitional phase in which influences from Cubism, Purism, Neo-Plasticism, Dada, and Constructivism were dominant.

Poetism was a significant direction in avant-garde Czech literature during the 1920s, albeit the term is sometimes used generally to refer to Czech avant-garde art of that period, except its practice in Pictorial Poems which were invented by approximately fifteen over sixty members of Devětsil, it did not become a true movement in visual art.

Thus, the Czech writers and poetists in the early twentieth century began to do experiment on their languages by mixing these two idioms.

Among the verbal artists, the picture-poem was in the form of connecting images and texts on a single surface or in a space which is treated as a canvas instead of the page of a book.

Picture poems combined poetry, assemblage and collage together and applied techniques that were used by the European Dadaists and Russian Constructivists.

Russian typographers’ posters and teachers and students from the German Bauhaus movement helped it created new compositions based on free association.

The work of picture poems was mainly used in book cultures, such as envelopes or the demonstration of avant-garde poetry and prose.

It had been a response to the crisis of representation that the verbal and visual arts were absorbed at the turning point of the twentieth century.

The birth of Poetism was announced as a new artistic direction and image poetry as a new form in the 1923 essay written by Karel Teige.

He has contributed a number of poetry collections, experimental plays and novels, memoirs, essays, and translations to Poetism movement.

[15] Compare to the discipline, order and a practical outlook that Constructivism required, the stance of Poetism was the freedom of creative imagination and the carefree release of all human senses.

The Poetist setting free of art from the museums and cathedrals led not only onto the streets, into the city, but also into modern life.

In some ways, the development of their creation in screenplays could be seen as an extension of the early concepts of the Devětsil of the pictorial poem, which include a lot of ideas form urban life, travelling, sports and other daily subjects.