Josef Capek & 14976 Josefcapek Asteroid - Prague, Czech Republic
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ToRo61
N 50° 04.910 E 014° 24.334
33U E 457471 N 5547899
Josef Capek (23 March 1887 – April, 1945) was a Czech artist who was best known as a painter, but who was also noted as a writer and a poet.
Waymark Code: WMJEQ9
Location: Hlavní město Praha, Czechia
Date Posted: 11/09/2013
Views: 47
Capek was born in Hronov, Bohemia (Austria-Hungary, later Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic) in 1887. First a painter of the Cubist school, he later developed his own playful primitive style. He collaborated with his brother Karel on a number of plays and short stories; on his own, he wrote the utopian play Land of Many Names and several novels, as well as critical essays in which he argued for the art of the unconscious, of children, and of 'savages'. He was named by his brother as the true inventor of the term robot (
visit link) . As a cartoonist, he worked for Lidové Noviny, a newspaper based in Prague. Due to his critical attitude towards national socialism and Adolf Hitler, he was arrested after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939. He wrote Poems from a Concentration Camp in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he died in 1945.
His illustrated stories about 'Pejsek a Kocicka' ('Doggie and Pussycat') are considered classics of Czech children's literature.
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Plaque Inscription
CZ: V tomto dome žili a tvorili bratri Josef a Karel Capkové v letech 1907-1925
EN: In this house lived and worked brothers Josef and Karel Capek in the years 1907-1925
14976 Josefcapek Asteroid is a main-belt asteroid.
Discovered by: P. Pravec
Date of discovery: 27. 9. 1997
Place of discovery: Ondrejov Observatory