Josef and Karel Capek were the best known literary figures
of liberated Czechoslovakia after 1918.
Josef won a considerable reputation as a painter of the Cubist
school, later developing his own playful primitive style. He
collaborated with his brother in composing sketches, stories,
plays, as well as writing two short novels of his own and critical
essays in which he defended the art of the unconscious, of children
and of savages. Following Hitler's invasion of 1939, Josef Capek
was sent to a German concentration camp. He died at Belsen in
April 1945.
Karel Capek became a journalist and for a time stage manager
of the theatre in Vinohrady. Olga Scheinpflugova, a prominent
actress, was his wife. Though a writer of novels, visionary romances,
travel books, stories, and essays, Karel is best known for his
plays. The Insect Play took the world by storm and was
performed to great acclaim in London and New York. This pessimistic
allegory of man's rapaciousness and stupidity, as duplicated
in the insect world, is as neatly contrived as it is uncomfortably
true. R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which introduced
the word robot into the English language, conceives a
future in which all workers will be automated. Their ultimate
revolt when they acquire souls and the ensuing cotastrophe comprise
an exciting, vivid theatrical experience. His last plays, written
just before the entry of Hitler into Czechoslovakia, deal with
the rise of dictatorship and the terrible consequences of war.
Karel Capek died on Christmas Day, 1938.
- Search eBay! for Josef and Karel Capek collectibles
Plays by the Capeks |