Chapter 7
In: Sport and the European Avant-Garde (1900-1945)
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Abstract
The chapter investigates the presence and the role of sporting topics in the leftist avant-garde magazines published in Central and Eastern Europe: ReD (edited by Karel Teige in Prague), Munka (edited by Lajos Kassák in Budapest), and Dźwignia (edited by Mieczysław Szczuka in Warsaw). These magazines, founded between 1927–1928, shared a similar approach to linking avant-garde experiment with social issues of workers’ culture. The chapter outlines three case studies: the first shows the ways in which Devětsil members associated with ReD collaborated with Federation of Proletarian Physical Training in Czechoslovakia; the second presents the sport-related work of the Munka circle and the Workers’ Physical Training Association in the field of amateur photography in Hungary while the the third highlights artistic and sporting activity by Mieczysław Szczuka, the editor of Dźwignia, who was a highly accomplished Polish mountaineer. Comparing the differences and similarities between the approach to sport by particular leftist avant-garde artists operating outside Soviet Russia, the article unveils the importance of participatory sport and sport spectatorship in artistic, social and political transformations.