Although Abstract Art dominated the scene following the Second World War, four artists Bruno Goller, Domenico Gnoli, Konrad Klapheck and Peter Klasen concentrated, quite independently of one another, on the representational. Indeed their contributions may be classified as part of a wave appearing during the twentieth century, “Magical Monumentalism”. Objects from everyday life were taken and then isolated, enlarged, reduced, abstracted and defamiliarized, while still remaining recognisable in their own right. They each selected certain things, which were then variegated within their range of works. Visual moments and shop window scenes in the case of Goller, the gigantically magnified details of everyday life items with Gnoli, Klapheck’s personified machines and Klasen’s closed and impersonal objects. There exists basic criteria unifying the four artists: man defines himself through his own created works. Goller, Gnoli, Klapheck and Klasen negate man for the most part, or make him anonymous as an individual. They employ everyday objects at a time where Abstract Art dominates the scene, thereby monumentalizing them on differing degrees of scale. Yet in spite of the down to earth, rational appearance and superiority, the items used are magical in the sense of the magic of things. The definition of the objects is one of precise, perfect, while simultaneously showing them as open and rational. By means of picture analysis and interpretation, these features are highlighted. Definitions and historical background are also part and parcel of this. An approach to the theme of man, monumentality and the relevance to the present day situation, always bearing in mind the magical aspects of the work, is an integral part of the thesis. Until now these artists were never brought together in such detail.

The work of Antonin Tenzer involves his activities in the period of six decades in the turbulent era of development of Czechoslovak history of architecture. The architect is known as one of the representatives of the avant-garde and High functionalism, author of Faculty Hospital in Prague-Motol and other medical buildings or the Jalta hotel, a building associated with socialist realism. In my dissertation, I tried to map the main typological fields that Antonín Tenzer used in his work. My goal was to widen the portfolio of famous buildings, and on the basis I defined the architect's major themes and current issues, which were responded in his effort. I based primarily on historic materials - published projects, plan documentation and writings of public and private archives, as well as personal heritage, made available to me by the architect's family. In particular thematic areas I focused on Tenzer's vital and successful implementation of competition projects, which he later followed and extended. In addition to impulses from his collaborators, debates and majors works of those days I was looking for elements and methods of Tenzer that influenced the architecture environment. I observed the influence of historical events and the socio-political situation in his work, for example, housing issues in...