Josef Čapek



Josef Čapek (23 March 1887 – April 1945 ) was a Czech artist who was best known as a painter, but who was also noted as a writer and a poet. He invented the word "robot", which was introduced into literature by his brother, Karel Čapek.

Life
Čapek was born in Hronov, Bohemia (Austria-Hungary, later Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic) in 1887. First a painter of the Cubist school, he later developed his own playful, minimalist style. He collaborated with his brother Karel on a number of plays and short stories; on his own, he wrote the utopian play Land of Many Names and several novels, as well as critical essays in which he argued for the art of the unconscious, of children, and of 'savages'. He was named by his brother as the true inventor of the term robot. As a cartoonist, he worked for Lidové Noviny, a newspaper based in Prague.

His illustrated stories Povídání o Pejskovi a Kočičce (English translation as The Adventures of Puss and Pup ) are considered classics of Czech children's literature.

Death
Due to his critical attitude towards national socialism and Adolf Hitler, he was arrested after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939. He wrote Poems from a Concentration Camp in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he died in 1945. In June 1945 Rudolf Margolius, accompanied by Čapek's wife Jarmila Čapková, went to Bergen-Belsen to search for him. His remains were never found. In 1948 the court officially set the date of his death as 30 April 1947.

Selected literary works

 * Lelio, 1917
 * Ze života hmyzu (Pictures from the Insects' Life), 1921 – with Karel Čapek
 * Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce (The Adventures of Puss and Pup), 1929
 * Stín kapradiny, 1930, novel
 * Kulhavý poutník, essays, 1936
 * Land of Many Names
 * Básně z koncentračního tabora (Poems from a Concentration Camp), published posthumously 1946
 * Adam Stvořitel (Adam the Creator) – with Karel Čapek
 * Dášeňka, čili život štěněte (Dashenka, consequently the life of a Puppy) – with Karel Čapek, illustrated by Josef

Literature

 * Ivan Margolius, 'The Robot of Prague', Newsletter, The Friends of Czech Heritage  no. 17, Autumn 2017, pp. 3 – 6.  https://czechfriends.net/images/RobotsMargoliusJul2017.pdf
 * Marie Šulcová. Čapci, Ladění pro dvě struny, Poločas nadějí, Brána věčnosti, Praha: Melantrich 1993-98
 * Marie Šulcová. Prodloužený čas Josefa Čapka, Praha: Paseka 2000