neoklasicismus

Neoklasicismus is a broad cultural and artistic movement that emerged in the mid-18th century as a revival of the art and ideals of ancient Greece and Rome. Developing across Europe, it was closely linked to Enlightenment ideas and a turn away from the ornate Rococo toward simplicity, clarity, and moral seriousness. The term is widely used in Czech and Slavic contexts as neoklasicismus.

Its program emphasized restrained emotion, geometric order, proportion, and the imitation of classical architecture, sculpture, and painting. Philosophers and archaeologists of the time, including Johann Joachim Winckelmann, argued that classical art expressed universal beauty and virtuous ideals, guiding contemporary creation. Designers borrowed ancient motifs—columns, pediments, friezes—and integrated them into civic buildings, museums, temples, and monuments to convey civic virtue and rational order.

Neoclassicism affected multiple arts. In architecture and sculpture, it favored clean lines, smooth surfaces, and idealized forms; in painting and history painting, it promoted noble subjects drawn from antiquity and republican history. In music, it favored formal balance and clarity of texture, influencing composers such as Haydn, Mozart, and early Beethoven, who sought classic forms and thematic unity.

Geographically, neoclassicism flourished in Paris, London, Rome, Vienna, and Saint Petersburg, and spread through Central and Eastern Europe, including the Czech lands. Public buildings, museums, and triumphal monuments often reflect its austere elegance and restrained ornament. The movement later contributed to the Greek Revival and other historicist currents of the 19th century.

By the 1820s–1830s, Romanticism and historicism challenged neoclassical rules, leading to its decline as a dominant style. Nevertheless, neoclassicism left a lasting footprint on Western visual culture, institutional architecture, and the pedagogy of art, continuing to be studied as a foundational phase in the history of modern art.