Karel Teige (1900–1951) was a Czechoslovak art and architecture theorist, organizer, book designer and typographer and a prominent yet often forgotten figure of the Marxist wing of the interwar avant-garde. He was a founding member of the art and architecture association Devětsil (1920–1931), of the Czechoslovak group at the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (1929–1932), and of the Left Front (1929–1938), an association of anti-fascist progressive artists, architects, and intellectuals, and a key figure of the Czechoslovak Surrealist Group. From 1929 to 1930, Teige briefly taught at the
Bauhaus; he maintained correspondence with influential artists, architects, and intellectuals of his time such as
Le Corbusier, Hannes Meyer, André Breton, and the Vesnin brothers. Regarded as a "Trotskyist degenerate," Teige had his published work suppressed for decades.
