Art historian Lahoda has died, he worked at Charles University

Prague - Art historian and former director of the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Vojtěch Lahoda, passed away on Monday at the age of 63. Barbara Gajewská from the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences announced this today to ČTK. Lahoda specialized as an art historian in the history of modernism and avant-garde, served as a respected university educator at Charles University, and participated as a curator in numerous exhibitions. His extensive monograph on the painter Emil Filla was nominated for the Magnesia Litera literary award in 2008.

Vojtěch Lahoda studied art history and aesthetics at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University. After completing his studies, he joined the Institute of Theory and History of Art at the then Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. In 1985, he defended his candidate dissertation on the topic of Figure in Czech Painting 1907-1932: Cubist Solutions, which determined his further direction in the field.

He began working at the Institute of Art History as a research assistant. Gradually, he became the head of a department, deputy director, and then held the position of director for more than ten years. "He led the institute in this role to excellent results and outstanding international recognition," said Gajewská.

According to colleagues, Lahoda was a top art historian specializing in the history of modernism and avant-garde. "In the area of his scientific interest, he brought many groundbreaking findings and entirely new perspectives on artworks," noted Gajewská. In the field of art history, he was, according to her, an indisputable authority on both the domestic and international scene.

In 2017, Lahoda received the Art Historical Society Award for long-term contribution to the field of art history. "Around the problem you are addressing, you always circle from different sides and angles to ultimately reveal to us what we often do not see. Moreover, you do not mechanically repeat already tried methods, but you always come up with something new: art history, in your conception, is a creative process, just as it is in true artistic creation," said current director of the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Tomáš Winter, in his laudation at that time.

Lahoda was the author of numerous publications that were published both in the Czech Republic and abroad. Among the most significant are the book Czech Cubism, monographs on painters Zdeněk Rykr, Jan Autengruber, or Karel Černý, and especially the monumental seven-hundred-page work on Emil Filla, which he worked on for 17 years.

As a curator, he contributed to several exhibitions. Among other things, he led the team project Sudek Project, which processes photographs and negatives of Josef Sudek stored in the collections of the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and comes up with new interpretations of Sudek's work.

"The departure of Professor Vojtěch Lahoda, our wise colleague and dear and kind friend, represents an immensely painful and irreplaceable loss for all his loved ones, for our institute, and for the entire field of art history," stated the Institute of Art History on its Facebook profile.