ABSTRACT
Czech avant-garde artists revolutionised book design through their enthusiasm for circus visuals and graphic rhetorics. They were enthusiastic about the international character of the circus, the perfection and discipline manifested in circus performances, the collective working processes, the closeness to the audience, the simultaneity or rapid change of individual elements in relation to the standardisation of entire programmes and the precise interplay of form and content. In the programmatic writings and manifestos of early Czech avant-gardists (from the early 1920s), in which “all the beauties of the world” and an “art for all the senses” were celebrated, the circus became an essential asset. This chapter zooms in on some recurring abstractions of characteristic circus elements (such as the circle, as the basic form of the arena), which became essential markers of the repertoire of Czech typography. Circus-related new book design, this chapter highlights, became the specific contribution of the Czech avant-garde to the international avant-garde.
