Démoni Josefa Mánesa

He waged a heroic struggle for the national character of artistic expression, but in the struggle for his love he failed miserably… Who was Josef Mánes (1820–1871) and are we supposed to imagine him in Slavic slang as a combative Czech who, with the dogged expression of an uncompromising revivalist, clutches his war tools – a palette with colors and a brush? This is how the traditional nationalist iconography of the 19th and 20th centuries would like to see him, but other images come closer to the truth. For example, the one in which we see Mánes as a neglected and downtrodden person who madly spews out a torso of incomprehensible sentences. What was the inner world of this genius artist, who bought moments of happy creation very dearly in a struggle with various demons and with himself?