Chochol, Josef

views updated

Chochol, Josef (1880–1956). Influenced by the work of Otto Wagner through the latter's pupil Jan Kotěra, Chochol became an important figure in Bohemia and Moravia. Before 1914 he dabbled with Expressionism, notably in the apartment-block in Neklan Street, Prague (1913), where prismatic shapes and inclined planes predominate. He was a leading practitioner of Cubism in architecture, as his villa below Vyšehrad Hill, Prague (1912–14), demonstrates. The applied decoration has no right angles, and virtually no surface is parallel to the outlines of the plan. His elimination of Historicism and the reduction of façades to elementary shapes led him to experiment with Constructivism in the 1920s.

Bibliography

Les'nikowski (ed.) (1996);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Jane Turner (1996);
Vegesack (ed.) (1992)