Jiří Kroha was a Czech architect, painter, sculptor, scenographer, designer and pedagogue. He was an important exponent of Czech architecture and design during inter-war period.

Biography

Kroha began his studies in Prague, but in 1904 his family moved to Plzeň. From 1907 to 1909 he gained his first experience with theatre, as a member of amateur cabaret

Cabaret

Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 group. In 1911, he graduated from realschule

Realschule

The Realschule is a type of secondary school in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It has also existed in Croatia , Denmark , Sweden , Hungary and in the Russian Empire .-History:The Realschule was an outgrowth of the rationalism and empiricism of the seventeenth and...

 in Plzeň. The same year he began to study at the Czech Technical University in Prague

Czech Technical University in Prague

Czech Technical University in Prague is one of the largest universities in the Czech Republic, and the oldest institute of technology in Central Europe....

. Among his professors were Jan Koula, Josef Fanta, Antonín Balšánek and Rudolf Kříženecký. In 1918 he successfully finished his studies at the Czech Technical University. At the same time he made first contacts with bohemian

Bohemianism

Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...

 group of the cabaret Montmartre from Řetězová Street in Prague. Among regular guests of the performances were Jaroslav Hašek

Jaroslav Hašek

Jaroslav Hašek was a Czech humorist, satirist, writer and socialist anarchist best known for his novel The Good Soldier Švejk, an unfinished collection of farcical incidents about a soldier in World War I and a satire on the ineptitude of authority figures, which has been translated into sixty...

, Max Brod

Max Brod

Max Brod was a German-speaking Czech Jewish, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is most famous as the friend and biographer of Franz Kafka...

, Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

, Eduard Bass

Eduard Bass

Eduard Bass, born Eduard Schmidt, was a Czech prose writer, journalist, singer, and actor.From 1910 he worked as a singer, journalist and cabaret director...

, Eduard Bass

Eduard Bass

Eduard Bass, born Eduard Schmidt, was a Czech prose writer, journalist, singer, and actor.From 1910 he worked as a singer, journalist and cabaret director...

, Konstantin Biebl

Konstantin Biebl

Konstantin Biebl was a Czech poet.-Biography:Konstantin Biebl was born in Slavětín near Louny, Bohemia, then Austria-Hungary. His father was a dentist in Louny, apt to write poetry and paint. He committed suicide in 1916 when he served as a surgeon in Galicia.. Arnošt Ráž, a brother of...

, Egon Erwin Kisch

Egon Erwin Kisch

Egon Erwin Kisch was a Czechoslovak writer and journalist, who wrote in German. Known as the The raging reporter from Prague, Kisch was noted for his development of literary reportage and his opposition to Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.- Biography :Kisch was born into a wealthy, German-speaking...

, Vítězslav Nezval

Vítezslav Nezval

Vítězslav Nezval was one of the most prolific avant-garde Czech writers in the first half of the twentieth century and a co-founder of the Surrealist movement in Czechoslovakia....

, Karel Teige

Karel Teige

Karel Teige was the major figure of the Czech avant-garde movement Devětsil in the 1920s, a graphic artist, photographer, and typographer...

, František Tichý and others. In 1918 Kroha became a member of the Mánes Union of Fine Arts

Mánes Union of Fine Arts

The Manes Association of Fine Artists was an artists' association and exhibition society founded in 1887 in Prague and named after the painter Josef Mánes....

, and he also began his collaboration with Artěl

Artel

Artel is a general term for various cooperative associations in Russia and Ukraine, historical and modern.Historically, artels were semi-formal associations for various enterprises: fishing, mining, commerce, of loaders, loggers, thieves, beggars, etc. Often artels worked far from home and lived...

(Atelier for Art Work in Prague).

In 1920s he designed several buildings in Mladá Boleslav

Mladá Boleslav

Mladá Boleslav is a city in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic, on the left bank of the Jizera river about 50 km northeast of Prague.Founded in the second half of the 10th century by King Boleslav II as a royal castle...

 and Kosmonosy

Kosmonosy

Kosmonosy is a town in the Czech Republic.-External links:*...

. In 1926 he began lecturing at the Brno University of Technology

Brno University of Technology

Brno University of Technology is a university located in Brno, Czech Republic...

, and two years later, in 1928, he moved to Brno

Brno

Brno by population and area is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia. Brno is the administrative centre of the South Moravian Region where it forms a separate district Brno-City District...

with his family.