At the beginning of the 20th century the artistic movements in the world were taking broad-minded steps along with the artists of Czechoslovakia. Czech innovators and their emotions seeded the upward growth of new interpretations of society and their work served as a reflection of their observations. A very important figure in the first part of the 20th century was the painter Antonin Slavicek. He was heavily influenced by the painters of the impressionist and post-impressionist periods of art; Claude Monet having the greatest impact. Slavicek projected a view similar to Monet emphasizing the surrounding world and the environment in which they lived. Slavicek's paintings depict his personal observations of nature, “...painting is a life of small colored spots, flickering light, flickering colors and warmth," seen in his View of Prague from Ladvi (1908). He felt that man possessed the tendency to look at the environment around him bypassing forms and figures, but discerning colors that comprise the shapes and configurations that had disappeared from man's view. He published a manifesto known as Ornamental Expressionism. Slavicek writes: "Man observes his surroundings and forgets about everything - he does not see forms or lines - he merely sees some kind of colored phantoms, - as unfamiliar ornaments." After Slavicek’s death in 1909, his successor Jindrich Prucha followed the theories of Slavicek and transgressed the natural and mystical state of expression where man and nature fuse as one creating yet another dimension of expressionism. In this form he penetrated the exterior and moved inward towards his own expression of thought. Antonin Hudecek, an artist playing yet another influential role in Czech art history distinguished himself by depicting mysterious landscapes in an almost natural surrounding. “Antonin Hudecek, at the turn of the century, was seen as a dreamy melancholic; a sensitive painter of nostalgic twilight moods who sought out intimate arrangements of landscapes, fascinated by the surface of lakes as mirrors of the soul or sparkling light reflected in streams”. The majority of Hudecek's pieces render the full moon which he consistently placed in a slightly noticeable manner in the background. Almost peaking out of the negative space, Hudecek's reference to the moon is what he considered to be a reflection of a small part of his soul.

Another artist who traveled his own path during the first part of the 1900s was the artist Otakar Nejedly. Although Nejedly in no way wanted Paul Gauguin to influence his own renditions of exotic lands, modern Czech critics agree that Nejedly's style is comparable to Gauguin's work.

Each of these important figures in the early 1900s helped clear a path for succeeding Czech artists to explore throughout their ongoing struggle for an artistic environment free of creative limitations.

In Czechoslovakia, the first half of the 20th century was a very productive period for the Czech art community. Influences came from all around Europe, welcoming the opportunity to create in contribution to the other great European Art movements of the time.

Antonin Prochazka and Emil Filla both stylized provocative works that escalated the popular status of Czech art in the early part of the 20th century. Inspired by Expressionism, French Fauvism, along with the works of Edward Munch, Prochazka developed a unique style that suggested a strong familiarity with cubist principles, Ohne (1922). These were times when Czechs moved to convey their impact, ideas and influences to the world. Through Prochazka's adaptation of the Neo-Classicist style he was able to further his already substantial influence upon the global art community. His art flourished during inter-war times when artists around Europe had creative freedom that encompassed the whole spectrum of tolerance and originality. Emil Filla was also following the styles of such well-known artists as Edward Munch and ultimately Pablo Picasso. His cubist pieces cultivated widespread recognition and distinguished him as a reputable artist. He did not create orthodox cubist works until around 1912, but moved further into reproductions of a picassoesque nature, Still Life (Sailor, Rotterdam) (1927). Both Prochazka and Filla were key innovators because their perspectives were considered complementary yet progressive in comparison to the other renown producers of art throughout Europe.

In the late 1920s a pair of Czech artists collaborated and co-created a new artistic movement. This exciting movement was called Artificialism. This was treated in the Czech art environment as an artistic parallel to Poetism. Both are similar because Artificialism provides a look into the inner identification of why or even how painters and poets create their works. Within this genre, there is an absence of depiction and literary character as well as a lack of decorative attributes. It can then identify with poetry and become understood as a predominantly free artistic form of expression. "While the Artificialists stressed that the subject of their paintings was the painting itself, they did not content themselves with indifferent names or their works but carefully chose poetic titles." They did this because they were not merely labeling their extravagant and misunderstood pieces of art, but were questioning the analogy of the situation. The title then subsequently offered, through its independence, a key to the painting.

Toyen, one of the two artists responsible for Artificialism painted extreme shapes that emphasize continuous movement throughout her pieces. Under some circumstances she added sand and paint, layering them while leaving globs of paint to drip down the canvas. Some instances involved making cuts through the thick paint to produce amazing, prominent lines across the surface of the piece. Her paintings would depict distinct yet non-descriptive forms brought forth by her use of color. Later on in her career she became one of the original members of the Czech surrealist movement along the side of Karel Teige. Jindřich Styřsky her husband, was the other of the two painters. Both of their styles aimed towards an artificial aspect by usage of colors and shapes, but each had their own unique style that separated them from one another. He created a style where animate and inanimate phenomena were transformed into natural fragments. Also included in his works were transitions between what he perceived as the organic and inorganic world. The flow created in his art suggests an obsession with death, decay and further aspects associated with eroticism. He states: "I remember a coffin which used to lie in the attic in my grandmother’s house. Grandmother used to keep apples in the coffin, before she placed herself in it. The coffin was filled with an apple fragrance."The idea was that the two artists wanted to convey attempts to fuel the imagination of the viewer and reject any credulous interpretation of the artists or their work in advance. They created extravagant pieces with a lack of literary character and any suggestion of societal reflection.

An idealistic predecessors to Artificialism, the group Devetsil, was founded by painter and writer Karel Teige who had a large influence on the views of Toyen. As one of the most influential Czech artists of the European avant-garde during the 1920s and 1930s Teige and the group formed an aesthetic posture called Poetism, as Teige asserted, "...poetism is not an -ism, but the art of living in the most beautiful sense of the word. It applies to all genres of art, because it applies to none." Devetsil took a left-wing approach and adopted Marxism as their main theory. Tiege himself used picture poems as an outlet to reflect on Poetism. Picture poems consist of an arrangement of photographs that use word structures placed over cutout photos to create a message. Departure for Cythera (1923) accurately portrays the application of this method. He photographed pages from a book and consequently created a picture poem from the photograph. Many different artists tried to recreate similar picture poems, but were never as successful as Tiege. Picture poems and Tiege's early reflections of Poetism did not replace his easel paintings as originally intended, but represented enthusiastic journeys through visual manifestations of exerts from his thesis. Devetsil aspired to create a movement that was original and unique to all others, understood and accepted by everyone.

We can see these connotations and sense the attitude of these demiurgical times through the works of Miroslav Ponc. As a member of Devetsil and a composer by nature, Ponc created paintings of a musical nature, suggesting movement and syncopation across the canvas. By using abstract, geometric figures such as circles and triangles, Ponc educated viewers in his methodology. Experimentation using music theory in cohesion with watercolor and paint unveils an enlivened and continuous form of motion throughout the piece, which evokes a visual experience analogous to hearing music. Chromatic Turbine in Eight-Tones (1925) depicts a tonal scale through the predominant use of colors and shapes.

Both Devetsil and Poetism were very important additions to Czech art in the 1920s and 30s. Their ties to surrealism enabled artists to induce lyrical effects with complimentary aesthetics. Intentions that artists could realize relate to and further use to outstretch the boundaries of the artistic genus.

In the 1930s other artists such as Jan Zrzavy and Josef Sima were on a creative path to transform a worldly theme of origin specifics into an unreal and dreamy vision of delight. But first it is important to understand that the period when Sima and Zrzavy were painting, was in fact the last period between World War I and II when the avant-garde was still predominant in Czech society. Zrzavy having Italian influences because of his frequent travels there achieved a suppressed and dematerialized, almost chiaroscuro color effect to his work. San Salvitore (1928) is indicative of his Italian influences and views on precise contours. His paintings depict landscapes with modern attributes that evoke an eerie, spiritual and etherealistic impression. "The inner tension of the balladic painting is created with the fusion of the changeable world in which countless actions unfold in the chaos and the timeless sphere of eerily, serene harmony." Our reality melts away with characters of the environment underneath presented as mere figments of our imagination, yet somehow constantly remind us of our existence and lack of ability to escape it. Sima challenged the simplest environment by stripping it down to its' essence and showing it as an arrangement of flat and voluminous shapes. His exquisite balance of color and dynamic use of organic shapes classify his work as an example of considerable difference from those representatives of Poetism. Later in his career he moved away from depicting what he thought of as lyrical, worldly visions and the existence of human tragedy. He took on new projects which consist of dark colors and shapes unmistakably perceived by viewers as solid and tangible. "The outside world in consequence becomes a function of the self-alone and everything takes place as if I were projecting it outward from the depths of my consciousness."

While the 1930s in Czechoslovakia was an assiduous decade for the expansion of Czech thought, it was also a time to make bold impressions on the world. Czech artists from many different genres collaborated to further perpetuate a period of artistic growth not only remarkable in historical Czech art but Central European art history.

Group 42 was a small group of artists in the 1930s founded by well-known Czech art theorist Jindrich Chalupecky to pursue the ideas of surrealist development. When Social Realism was progressing influentially in the Soviet Union and states of Eastern Europe, Group 42 (František Hudecek, František Gross, Ladislav Zivr, and Miroslav Hak) was trying to expand its' own ideological theories. They were heavily influenced by man and his surroundings, and how mankind adapts to the congestion of an urban environment, saturated with the unnatural. They found magic in the simple surroundings that the city had to offer that they considered to be definitive of civilization and its' remnants.

With the Second World War over and Czechoslovakia under foreign, political occupation, the mainstream art community in central Europe took a turn not towards the expansion of creativity and growth, but a turn inward. With the socialist power of Russia molding central Europe into a communist society, growth-potential was considered non-existent. This in turn deeply damaged the source of the Czech artistic culture. People began to acknowledge that they would no longer participate in the developmental provisions directing the international art movement on a global scale. Restrictive boundaries limited expression and artists began to interpret concepts within their pieces such as self-introversion and spirituality. "This spiritual constant has been strengthened and reinforced by the political constitution of our art. It does not grow from the fullness of life but becomes a substitute form of existence, both for the individual and for society." The political powers influenced or, more precisely, determined what would be constituted as socially acceptable.

An artist during this time, Vladimir Boudnik took his expressive abilities and redirected them inward. He turned his art not into something that society could evaluate as a reflection of contemporary, social or political discourse, but the entrapment of his own inner spiritual awareness as a repercussion of conflicting public interests. He was best known for his prints which utilized materials such as fabric, sand, sawdust, threads and string to alter a basic piece of art into an unrecognizable yet tangible representation of his emotions. By printing each sheet individually, he was able to produce the appearance of a monotype. He would also use heavy machinery to alter his works such as a pneumatic hammer, saw blades, files, and any other sort of tool at his disposal stating that they "actively interfered" with the material. Traces of Material (1958) evidently convey his usage of tools. Under the provision of a profound, radical style of art, Boudnik was using his associative method to portray his conception of the visual world. In 1949 he published 'explosionalism manifesto,' under the presumption that if everyone were to create their own images experienced through their visions and manifest them into inartistic marks throughout the visual world, they too could be artists.

Expressive art had become a path too narrow to travel however, this did not mean that all artists conformed to the rules and regulations under the organization of the Communist regime. Painter Mikulas Medek was a very influential artist in the 1950s and 60s for the subsequent Czech generation of artists. Medek's reaction to the tragic events of the 1950s focused on the deplorable expression of the human figure and ideas that addressed painful situations involving the state of man in the modern world; referring to this as his existential period. His style at this time took on the feel of surrealism, an art movement forbidden by the Communist party. Although he claimed ideas on canvas as representative statements, his visions still did not actually appear to be volatile to the social scheme. This meant that his depictions represented his reactions in opposition of societal status, but his forms were considered by critics to be unrecognizable and somewhat ambiguous. His existential tension continued in his later works, but became even more representative than recognizable. "The initially organic morphology became rigid and geometric, hair became bunches of prickles, arms folded into acute angles. Now he represented the figure by a square for the head and a rectangle for the body." His piece A stone in the Mouth, Bumps on the Head (1968), displays a figure head, however only geometric shapes were used to symbolize the face. This painting holds a very gothic appearance to it rendered by the use of dark colors and unexplainable shadows that could have symbolized the lack of freedom of speech and expression under the rule of Communism. Many other artists that stood at the forefront of their careers during this period were enlightened by Medek's descriptive style of art.

The 1950s set new standards for Czech style and cultural influence, as well as many other countries during the time of Communism. Czechs persisted as individuals, experimental within their own unique genres, but well emersed within a struggle against the enforcement of creative restraint.

In 1963 a group of artists chose a method based upon its' potential of integration into society. This group was called ‘kři ovatka’ (crossroads). Such artists as Karel Malich, Zdeněk Sykora, and Jiři Kolař, confronted styles of lyrical abstraction as well as romantic sentiment through the art movement ‘Nova Citlivost’ (new sensibility). "...the objective tendency was supported by constructive order, reduction, exact experiments, conceptualization, and reduction of language and followed a rationalization of means." This type of art was permitted in a socialist society because it was a branch of Socialist Realism, Constructivism. Because this was not a subjective style of art it was not repressed.

Jiři Kolař one of the founders of the group created objective forms by using what was called rollage, which was done by placing scraps of a picture on top of another, creating an integrative piece of art. He merged two pictures of a separate nature to produce tension within the piece. The effectiveness of rollage depends on the degree of contradiction between the combined images.

Zdeněk Sykora, took on a very creative side of Constructivism. By calculating mathematical analogies on a computer generating shapes to an exponential degree, Sykora was able to continually turn and re-work these shapes into new and intricate outcomes. “The whole structure is organically built precisely according to present rules. To turn one of the figures in the fundamental program would bring about a transformation of the whole structure.” Although he used a computer in the process of generating a form of art, completion of the piece was not reached on behalf of the computer alone. Final completion was achieved by the application of oil on canvas in coherence with pre-calculated coordinates.

This group had an amazing effect on the artistic prowess of their Czech contemporaries. They contributed an objective approach as opposed to the subjective styles that were dominant at the time, and perpetuated both developmental and experimental stages of Czech art.

Karel Malich spoke of, “...form as construction, a flow of energy and energetic events in space.” At that time he was using geometric structures and grids, not for the purpose of creating a system but to consequently record energy flow. Maybe these men had a dream of building something that could be viewed by the world and understood from a scientific perspective, but still seen as beautiful. The New Sensibility was a drastic departure from the views of romantic aesthetics. Because their way of thinking lacked sufficient traditions commonly represented in Czech art, they had to overcome certain contradictions from which romantic ideas flourished.

The late 1960s and early 70s brought a form of neo-expressivism that depicted the unsettling situation of how the human individual was viewed in society. Forms of mockery or sarcasm were conveyed in the work of Jiři Načeradsky. His pieces looked as if they were painted on the wall of a building within a social setting, with distorted bodies giving his art an overall feeling of discomfort. His altered human figures are a de-personification of man as components in the Czechoslovak Socialist-Realist machine. People were made to appear as nothing more than a number in an arrangement of digits or a single letter in a carefully written novel. Human beings were something that because of their lack of freedom had only one purpose such as to turn a crank, pull a cord or occupy just one small space in the larger scheme of a socialist machine. This grotesque commentary continued within the work of the artist Jiři Sopko. Sopko illustrated his oblique views and ideas of the world we live in, not only by using bizarre images, but in contrast, using eminent and exciting combinations of colors. "His warped view of the human figure is so strange that we have the impression of a curious underwater world. At the same time his distortion is balanced with strong, brightly-lit, warm colors as if in celebration of the sun". In comparison, while Načeradsky was depicting the role of humanity as components in the make-up of a machine, Sopko was painting images of man as a powerless actor in some ludicrous drama. By painting images that were simple in their nature, by means of a minimalist style of representation he was able to conceive his ideas of the grotesque and peculiar dynamism. Abnormal representations of society, assist our understanding of how man under Communism was valued and placed in the larger picture. The human figure was merely a cog in a device to ensure the mobility of a species or its' ability to survive.

There were other artists at the time that depicted such social issues using monstrous imagery. At no time were these fundamental images subversive enough to be restricted. This was a time surrender to the issues at hand; applying an aloof state to the depictions within their artwork while concurrently creating a basis for younger artists to apply from.

While the years following the Prague Spring were intolerable in many ways, the 1980s or otherwise the final decade in which the powers of the regime began to recede providing young artists with lenient political conditions and a greater number of opportunities for exposure. Artists such as Jiři David, František Skala, and Jaroslav Rona started making art in a time of unrest and retention. Because of their involvement with important underground exhibitions such as Confrontation I and II they managed to build what came to be acknowledged as the new alternative art scene in Czechoslovakia. "The act of coming out of the underground into the open seems quite symptomatic. For it meant the end of resistance against normalization, which was becoming much less strict anyway, and the acceptance of the political situation as it was."

Jaroslav Rona, an artist during the 1980s that helped promote the new art scene did so by co-founding the art group 'Tvrdohlavi' (hardheaded). Rona painted mystifying images that signified a return to mythological imagery and origins of the world while expressing the trials of the primal human. His work in the latter part of the '80s displayed a transition towards cubism, Monument (1988), influenced particularly by the spiritual works of Bohumil Kubista. Young artists were returned to a freedom which before the 1930s was taken for granted. As a result of this rediscovery, paintings of magical and symbolic visions or storytelling returned to larger sized canvases.

Jiři David, an artist who co-founded Hardheaded also helped organize the 1984 Prague Confrontation exhibition, which contributed to changes substantial to the art community. He adopted the idea of the void in which all values were placed with eternal truths, thus rendering them invalid. "His paintings became impersonal quotations of both banal and sublime symbols, idols and fetishes." In his work, contemporary civilization is analogous to emptiness as a result of the regression of its' constructive, moral nature and values construed by David as artificial. Society he stated, has forfeited itself to the contemporary beast of continuous social and cultural metamorphosis or new wave. He valued culture in a traditional sense to remind us of our innocence. When all we value is something that may be of a materialistic nature, something of which in the overall picture carries no virtue at all. David felt that art should abolish any representation of form and aesthetics and focus on an impelling force leading towards self-expression.

By the end of the 1980s, Czech Painting had finally confirmed, after hardship and struggle, the artistic and political freedom complimentary to an expressive outlet beyond limitation and government censorship. Painting became a means to cross borders, share ideas and overcome obstacles along the way. All of the artists during this period made visually, expressive contributions to our world not only for themselves, but for the masses of which they aimed.

Abrupt political changes historically placed limitations upon expressive acts, however Czechs have come a long way in visual arts. Whether it be Czech surrealism with Karel Tiege and his representations of poetism in the context of an 'attitude' or Zdeněk Sykora, the New Sensibility, and his angle on the order and outcomes of shapes based upon mathematical calculations using a computer. In the process of adapting to coarse European political structures Czech society has endured and their triumph and tragedy is expressed in their painting.