{"id":7072,"date":"2025-06-07T00:27:50","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T22:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sovamm.cz\/wordpress\/?page_id=7072"},"modified":"2025-06-08T06:55:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T04:55:40","slug":"bohumil-vavrousek","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sovamm.cz\/wordpress\/en\/exhibitions\/exhibition-bohumil-vavrousek-photographer\/bohumil-vavrousek\/","title":{"rendered":"Bohumil Vavrou\u0161ek"},"content":{"rendered":"

(25. 6. 1875 Slav\u011bt\u00edn u Chot\u011bbo\u0159e \u2013 6. 10. 1939 Praha)<\/em><\/p>\n

Bohumil Vavrou\u0161ek, a certified teacher for lower secondary education, was one of the first amateur photographers to systematically create photographic documentation of architectural monuments and rural buildings as soon as the first third of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Vavrou\u0161ek\u2018s interest in ethnography and vernacular architecture was primarily influenced by his visit to the Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition in Prague (1895) and the entire process of its preparation.<\/p>\n

The sightseeing trips, he made from 1909 became the basis for several guidebooks and articles accompanied by several photographs of architectural monuments, and comments on the appearance of vernacular buildings. His articles, accompanied by high-quality photographs, attracted the attention of art historians, such as Canon Anton\u00edn Podlaha, who published a series Posv\u00e1tn\u00e1 m\u00edsta kr\u00e1lovstv\u00ed \u010desk\u00e9ho<\/em> [Sacred Places of the Kingdom of Bohemia], to which Vavrou\u0161ek contributed his photographs. At that time, he also met the young art historian Zden\u011bk Wirth, who later wrote introductory texts for Vavrou\u0161ek\u2018s publications on vernacular buildings.<\/p>\n

Vavrou\u0161ek tried to gather information for his planned inventory of vernacular buildings by sending out questionnaires, but only ten out of 120 were returned. As a\u00a0result, he had no choice but to literally wander from village to village in search of individual preserved old buildings. At first, he travelled on foot or by bicycle, carrying a large wooden camera and a rucksack full of glass plates. Later, travels by train and bus had to be supplemented, of course, by walking to locations without such connections. He also drove his own car (from 1930), staying in hotels or with his friends and acquaintances during trips lasting several days.<\/p>\n

Vavrou\u0161ek developed a deep affection for Slovakia after his visit (in 1910, with his friend Adolf Wenig) and returned there several times a year. He worked for Slovakia not only as a long-standing executive of the Czechoslavic Unity but also as the author of the first textbooks for Slovak elementary schools. Vavrou\u0161ek was equally fascinated by the natural beauty and folk culture of Subcarpathian Ruthenia.<\/p>\n

Between 1911 and 1936, Vavrou\u0161ek created most of his photographic documentation across much of the territory that would later form the Czechoslovak Republic. He published some of his photographs in the magazines Zlat\u00e1 Praha<\/em>, \u010cesk\u00fd sv\u011bt<\/em>, and Sv\u011btozor<\/em>, and later in the illustrated books Malebn\u00e9 Slovensko<\/em> [Picturesque Slovakia] (1920-1923), D\u011bdina<\/em> [The Village] (1925), Kostel na d\u011bdin\u011b a v m\u011bste\u010dku<\/em> [The Church in a Village and a Small Town] (1929) and C\u00edrkevn\u00ed pam\u00e1tky na Podkarpatsk\u00e9 Rusi<\/em> [Church Monuments in Subcarpathian Ruthenia] (1929). He also prepared two other large pictorial publications – M\u011bste\u010dko<\/em> [The Small Town], featuring photographs from small towns and examples of technical and public buildings, and Emp\u00edr v \u010cech\u00e1ch<\/em> [The Empire Style in Bohemia], focused on architectural monuments and rural masonry buildings from the first half of the 19th century. However, neither of these works was published, as no publisher was willing to publish them. The print-ready maquettes, stored in the Archives of the Academy of Sciences, were irreversibly damaged during the 2002 floods.<\/p>\n

Another of Bohumil Vavrou\u0161ek\u2018s lifelong interests was the documentation of monuments related to the life and work of national revivalists, writers, and visual artists. He devoted considerable effort to preparing the pictorial Liter\u00e1rn\u00ed atlas \u010ceskoslovensk\u00fd<\/em> [The Literary Atlas of Czechoslovakia] (1932, 1938). This major work was preceded by the two-volume pictorial set \u010cesk\u00e9 album I<\/em>. Spisovatel\u00e9<\/em> [Czech Album I. Writers] and \u010cesk\u00e9 album II. Politikov\u00e9<\/em> [Czech Album II. Politicians] (1919). He also served as an editor for several publications dedicated to K. H. Borovsk\u00fd and contributed editorially to publications on J. K. Tyl, K. H. M\u00e1cha, F. T\u00e1borsk\u00fd, M.\u00a0R.\u00a0\u0160tef\u00e1nik, J. E. Purkyn\u011b, and J. Ko\u0159ensk\u00fd. He issued several sets of photographic postcards, primarily depicting scenes from Slovakia (1917, 1920) and people in Slovak folk costumes. Vavrou\u0161ek\u2018s plans to publish monographs of individual towns and Atlas \u010deskoslovensk\u00fdch v\u00fdtvarn\u00fdch um\u011blc\u016f<\/em> [The Atlas of Czechoslovak Visual Artists], for which he had already gathered the necessary materials, were left unfinished due to his death. The book Josef Tulka: rom\u00e1n \u017eivota a d\u00edlo<\/em> [Josef Tulka: A Novel of Life and Work] (1940) was published posthumously.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Updated: 08\/06\/2025 06:55<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(25. 6. 1875 Slav\u011bt\u00edn u Chot\u011bbo\u0159e \u2013 6. 10. 1939 Praha) Bohumil Vavrou\u0161ek, a certified teacher for lower secondary education, was one of the first amateur photographers to systematically create photographic documentation of architectural monuments and … Pokra\u010dov\u00e1n\u00ed textu Bohumil Vavrou\u0161ek<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":6841,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7072","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P8dB8l-1Q4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sovamm.cz\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sovamm.cz\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sovamm.cz\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sovamm.cz\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sovamm.cz\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7072"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sovamm.cz\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7089,"href":"https:\/\/sovamm.cz\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7072\/revisions\/7089"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sovamm.cz\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sovamm.cz\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}