Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/385

He bears the marks of this severe protest against the rule of the hated Austrians to this day. He has not yet recovered his normal physique, and his tall, bony frame and shaven head give him the ascetic look of a Buddhist priest. Surrounded by the paintings which line the walls of his little flat, the man’s saturation with Oriental ideas becomes instantly apparent.

He lives only to return to the jungles of India. He says he is going back this winter—but Europe has only begun to pour its flattery upon him. Whether he will remember the jungles of India, which have given him his fame, after the salons of Paris and London have begun to dawn upon him remains to be seen, for there is no doubt that he is one of the greatest “finds” of recent years. His work has all the conciseness of Gauguin and the semi-Oriental splendor of Bakst.

Hneškovsky was originally destined for a civil engineer, but he chafed under the mathematical exactions of engineering, and in 1909 went to the School of Fine Arts at Rome. Here he made a considerable study of the old masters, but not in the accepted way of art academies. Instead, he made free paraphrases of them, taking their motives and rearranging them in his own terms.

He soon tired of copying, and after meeting another Czech artist at the Cafe del Greco, the accepted haunt of artists in Rome, the two of them set out afoot to paint through southern Italy and Sicily. This tour was merely an eye opener to him, and it was not long before they signed up as stokers on an Austrian Lloyd vessel from Trieste bound for India.

They landed at Colombo, with no possessions but artists’ materials, two guns, a little ammunition and about $6.50 between them. The expensive hotels of Colombo were shunned, and they struck off into the Ceylon jungles, to make their homes with the naked savages and to get their food by hunting and fishing.

Three years later Hneškovsky’s companion was compelled to return to Prague by reason of an attack of malaria, but Hneškovsky remained behind. For two years longer he made his home with primitive peoples who were untouched by civilization. He was accepted by them as one of their own number, and clad only in a loin cloth, he spent his nights painting about the camp fire and his days in hunting.

He has still the most profound love for these savages. He is thoroughly saturated with the Eastern simplicity of their outlook on life.

“They worship the big rocks in the forests,” he says, “and it is impossible to keep from joining them in their veneration of the terrible boulders which lie in their jungles. They believe that a spirit resides in these boulders which rules the forest, and it is this simple veneration of the elementary forces of nature which makes them supremely attractive to any man who tires of the pompous hypocrisies of Western civilization.

“They have no words for right and wrong. They have no word for stealing in their native tongue. These things are not known among them. It is only as the white men in India are able to trade gin to them that they come into ruinous contact with the West.”

Hneškovsky finally came back to Prague just before the war began, to begin the utilization of the material he had collected in the jungles. And there the war caught him. The terrible ordeal to which the Austrians subjected him during the war has all but broken him, but the magnificent physique which enabled him to survive five years in the jungles of India is standing him in good stead.

He is planning now to return to India this fall—but it remains to be seen whether the adulation of Paris and London will turn him away from his loved East. For the little group of British artists who have discovered him regard him as one of the great “finds” of recent years.

Since removing the office of the Czechoslovak Chamber of Commerce of America from Chicago to New York the new quarters have become an important center for advising American business houses regarding Czechoslovak business and merchants of Czechoslovakia regarding business conditions in the United States. A number of firms in Czechoslovakia have submitted propositions, both practical and impractical, to place before the American people. Many large business firms in the United States have come in quest of information as to the best method of opening up business relations in the new country. Information at the disposal of the executive offices of the Chamber was freely and gladly given.

The principal functions of this Chamber of Commerce are informative relative to commerce between the two countries. It cannot undertake to buy or sell. It must be a neutral and an independent body.

Naturally the expenses of maintaining an organization of this kind are heavy. One of the first organizations to grasp the importance of maintaining the New York Office was the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce. In answer to an urgent appeal they immediately sent $168.00 as their contribution. Following the receipt of this sum came the tidings from Chicago that the following firms became active members:

Adams State Bank, Jos. Klička, President.

American State Bank, Jas. F. Štěpina, President.

Depositors State Bank, James J. Pesička, Pres.

Kasper State Bank, Otto Kasper, President.

Lawndale National Bank, Fr. G. Hájíček, Pres.

Frank G. Hajíček, Banker.