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Jan Kotěra

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Jan Kotěra
1923 portrait by Vladimír Jindřich Bufka
Born18 December 1871
Died17 April 1923(1923-04-17) (aged 51)
NationalityCzech
Known forArchitecture

Jan Kotěra (18 December 1871 – 17 April 1923) was a Czech architect, artist and interior designer, and one of the key figures of modern architecture in Bohemia.

Biography

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Kotěra was born in Brno, the largest city in Moravia, to a Czech father and German-speaking mother. He studied architecture in Vienna during the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under the Viennese master Otto Wagner.[1]

Kotěra returned to Prague in 1897 to help found a dynamic movement of Czech nationalist artists and architects centered on the Mánes Union of Fine Arts. Strongly influenced by the work of the Vienna Secession, his work bridged late nineteenth-century architectural design and early modernism. Kotěra collaborated with Czech sculptors Jan Štursa, Stanislav Sucharda, and Stanislav's son Vojtěch Sucharda on a number of buildings.

As a teacher, Kotěra trained a generation of Czech architects, including Josef Gočár, who would bring Czech modernism to its pinnacle in the years leading up to the Nazi occupation in 1939. Kotěra was one of a number of Czech architects to design the "Bata houses" and Bata shoe factory at East Tilbury, Essex, England.[2] These are considered Modernist landmarks of industry and a company town.

Works

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References

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  1. ^ Pevsner, Nikolaus, Sir James Maude Richards & Dennis Sharp (2000). The anti-rationalists and the rationalists, Architectural Press, p. 106. ISBN 0-7506-4815-5
  2. ^ Rose, Steve (2006-06-19). "Steve Rose: on East Tilbury the most Modern town in Britain". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-11-20.
  3. ^ Jan Kotěra, 1871-1923:the founder of modern Czech architecture. Municipal House. 2001. ISBN 9788086217475.
  4. ^ Cultural Movement Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine, Foibos.cz, retrieved 4 November 2013
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