Left Front

The Left Front was an organization of left-wing intellectuals in Czechoslovakia, founded in 1929 on the initiative of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. History Formed in 1930, which saw itself as the successor to the Devětsil Union of Modern Culture. The founding date was on October 18, 1929. On this day a general meeting of mainly members of Devětsil took place, in which some basic documents such as the programmatic statement of the new association were approved. The founding members were Karel Teige, Stanislav Kostka Neumann, Vítězslav Nezval, Bedřich Václavek, E.F. Burian, Vilém Závada, František Halas, Julius Fučík and later joined by Vladislav Vančura, Ivan Sekanina, Ladislav Štoll and others. The chairman of the newly found organisation became Zdeněk Nejedlý in 1932. The chosen name Levá fronta was a reference to the LEF in the Soviet Union. The group was founded relatively quickly in other cities, first in Brno initiated by Jindřich Honzl and E. F. Burian; other local clubs emerged in 1931 in Boskovice, Žilina, Užhorod, Hradec králové and Ostrava. Working sections soon emerged, specializing in various fields: the literary section, which was probably the most important, included doctors, philosophers, sociologists and economists. In 1931, Filmová a fotografická skupina (Film-Foto Group, also known as "fi-fo") was formed, prompted by film historian Lubomír Linhart who became its spokesman. The architects who founded their own section were particularly active – Architonická sekce Levé fronty (AsLeF, the Architectural Section of the LeF), initiated by Karel Teige and involved prominent architects such as Jaromír Krejcar, Jiří Kroha, Jiří Novotný and others. While the orientation towards poetism, later increasingly accompanied by epic elements, predominated in poetry, the active forces of the architecture section were first influenced by purism (in particular influenced by Le Corbusier), to later become protagonists of functionalism and above all of constructivism.