PhDr. Lenka Bydžovská, CSc.

Researcher at the Department of Art of the 19th-21st Centuries.

Lenka Bydžovská studied art history and Italian philology at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague between 1976–1981 (PhDr. 1982, CSc. 1990). She has been working at the IAH CAS (formerly Institute of Theory and History of Art) since 1981, focusing on Czech modernism and avant-garde in the international context. Between 1993 and 2017 she headed the Department of 19th to 21st-Century Art, between 1994 and 2017 she was a member of the IAH's advisory board and from 1996 to 2016 she was the editor-in-chief of the journal Umění / Art. Bydžovská co-authored a number of publications and exhibitions and collaborated with prominent Czech and international galleries including The Museum of Fine Art Houston and Wilhelm-Hack-Museum Ludwigshafen am Rhein. She is currently a co-investigator for the international project Years of Disarray 1908–1928. Avant-Gardes in Central Europe.

Research outputs (selection):

Lenka Bydžovská, “Do You See Anything?“, Asked Poussin´: The Informe, Bataille and the Czech Surrealists, in: Beáta Hock – Klara Kemp-Welch – Jonathan Owen (edd.), A Reader in East-Central-European Modernism 1918–1956, London 2019, pp. 301–316.

Lenka Bydžovská – Karel Srp, Krása bude křečovitá. Surrealismus v Československu 1933–1939, Řevnice – Hluboká nad Vltavou 2016.

Lenka Bydžovská – Vojtěch Lahoda – Karel Srp, Černá slunce. Odvrácená strana modernity 1927–1945, Řevnice – Ostrava 2012.

Lenka Bydžovská – Karel Srp (edd.), New Formations. Czech avant-garde art and modern glass from the Roy and Mary Cullen collection, Houston 2011.

Lenka Bydžovská – Karel Srp (edd.), Alfons Mucha: Slovanská epopej, Praha 2011.

Lenka Bydžovská – Karel Srp, Jindřich Štyrský, Praha 2007.

Lenka Bydžovská, Toyen a Mnemosyne, Umění / Art LV, 2007, pp. 470–480.

Lenka Bydžovská – Karel Srp, Josef Šíma: Návrat Theseův, Praha 2006.

Lenka Bydžovská, The Avant-Garde Ideal of Poiesis: Poetism and Artificialism during the Late 1920s, in: Eric Dluhosch – Rostislav Švácha (edd.), Karel Teige: l‘enfant terrible of the Czech modernist avant-garde, Cambridge, Mass. – London 1999, pp. 46–63.

Lenka Bydžovská – Karel Srp (edd.), Český surrealismus 1929–1953, Praha 1996.

Current projects:

Mikuláš Medek: Nahý v trní, exhibition in National Gallery in Prague - Valdštejnská jízdárna, Anežský klášter and Veletržní palác, 10. 9. 2020 – 10. 1. 2021 - co-author of the concept of the exhibition

Umění – gesto – argument, interdisciplinary project led by Institute of Czech Literature of the CAS – co-investigator