Czech Modernism

Part of TŌN’s Sight & Sound series

Sight & Sound goes “on the road” this season while The Met Museum is under construction, bringing TŌN’s popular music-and-visual-art series to new locations! Each performance includes a discussion with conductor and music historian Leon Botstein accompanied by on-screen images and live musical excerpts, followed by a full performance of the works discussed.

Centered in Prague, the Czech Modernist movement flourished in the time between the world wars with an explosion of avant-garde creativity. Artists like Frantisek Kupka, Bohumil Kubista, and Toyen worked in abstraction, surrealism, and cubism, transitioning Central European art away from traditional representation. Meanwhile, composers including Vítězslav Novák, Erwin Schulhoff, and Josef Suk pushed the boundaries of traditional harmony, infusing Moravian folk music into their scores and creating rhythmic masterpieces.