Josef Váchal

Josef Váchal was a versatile artist, concentrating on graphic art, especially coloured woodcuts, painting, drawing and wood carving. He was exceptionally enthusiastic about books, either as an author of texts or lettering, as an illustrator, typographer or bookbinder. His appearance in Litomyšl was the result of his friendship with a local teacher, town tax collector and librarian Josef Portman. Portman was a well-known amateur printer who wanted Váchal to decorate his furniture with woodcuts and paintings and carry out the fresco decoration of the interior of his home which today contains the Portmoneum – the Museum of Josef Váchal in Litomyšl (C3-73).

He was born to a single mother, Anna Váchalová, who worked as a maid in Prague. Young Josef was brought up by his grandparents in Písek where he attended, but did not finish, grammar school. In 1898, he went to Prague to start an apprenticeship with the bookbinder Jindřich Waitzmann. He also attended a vocational school of further education. In 1902, he completed his apprenticeship as a bookbinder, but at this time he was more interested in his own artwork. Two years later, after being recommended by his uncle, the painter Mikoláš Alš, he enrolled at the private art college of Rudolf Bém. He was a member of the art associations Sursum, Tvorba and Skupina výtvárníků in Hradec Králové.

Although Váchal attended the afore-mentioned private art school, he was basically self-taught. His work drew from his personal experiences (bouts of anxiety, fear of the unknown, visual and auditory hallucinations), but was also influenced by his fondness for Medieval and Baroque book culture, Secession and Modern art trends, consequently, Symbolism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism and Abstract art. However, he often singularly parodied these modern art stances, the result being that seemingly converse levels contradict each other – irony and humour alongside spirituality of the period. Within his world of musings, he alternated between belief and heresy, dealt with Spiritualism, occult sciences and Theosophy, and was enthusiastic about Anarchism.

In 1913, Josef Portman became acquainted with Josef Váchal's woodcuts, and corresponded extensively with him, attempting to gain some of his work for himself as well as for adorning his printed work. In 1920, he asks Váchal to decorate the interior of his house in Litomyšl. Váchal works there on and off right up to 1924 when he ceases work as the two men are becoming more and more antagonistic. Váchal's wall paintings were restored in the 1990s, and are a unique opportunity to see the artist's work today. At first glance, a disorderly, boldly coloured mixture of painting styles, themes and references to other works of art, all containing hundreds of devils, goblins, figures not only from religious but also vulgar literature, and blended with references to real-life landscapes which Váchal visited during action in the First World War.

It was not only Váchal's artwork that was inspired by written motifs. The so-called Bloody Novel – a genre of penny-dreadful literature especially popular in the latter half of the 19th century – inspired him to write his literary opus Krvavý román (Bloody Novel, 1924) in which we can find references to Litomyšl and Portman's house. Specifically the woodcuts illustrating this book became the pattern for the sgraffito decoration of Váchalova Street in Litomyšl (C1-VP3), carried out by students of the School of Restoration in 1998 (today's Faculty of Restoration, University of Pardubice). The school has been in operation since 1993, and the restoration team working in the Portmoneum were present at its founding. The Paseka publishing house, bookshop and antiquarian book shop were named according to a character from Váchal's Krvavý román and can be found under that name at the corner of Váchalova Street. The nearby literary café Na Sklípku is a reference to the pub that Váchal visited when in Litomyšl (today, Hotel Aplaus stands in its place) and to which he also referred to in his Krvavý roman. Every year, since 2012, Litomyšl remembers Váchal's artwork and poetry with its festival Lázně ducha (Spa of the Spirit).

1904–1906
Astral Plain
Museum of Czech Literature

1904–1906
Elementary Plain
Museum of Czech Literature

1908
Media Head
Museum of Czech Literature

1909
Invokers of the Devil
Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové

1912
In Paradise
Litomyšl Town Gallery

1921
Apotheosis of Spiritualism
Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové