Věra Běhalová 100

Since October 2023, the Norbertov Study and Documentation Centre has been re-staging an exhibition dedicated to Věra Běhalová which was prepared by the Plzeň Literary Festival and the exhibition’s creator David Růžička in 2022. Not only will it feature the prominent researcher of the history modern architecture Věra Běhalová, but also the Plzeň work of the world-famous architect Adolf Loos.

Věra Běhalová was born in Prostějov on 31 July 1922. During the 1940s and 1950s, she was persecuted for her activities by then totalitarian regimes. In the second half of the 1960s, she came into contact with Loos’s architectural legacy in Plzeň where she interrogated contemporary witnesses and corresponded with Loos’s former colleagues, clients, and friends. Běhalová painstakingly searched and documented all that remained in Plzeň from the work of the world-class architect. She continued her research after her emigration to Vienna in 1968 where she died in January 2010.

The exhibition provides an overview of the life and destiny of this historian of 19th and 20th century architecture who contributed to the rescue of many Loos’s interiors in Plzeň from destruction by suggesting their designation as cultural monuments. Her strong will and tremendous enthusiasm earned her the position of one of the greatest connoisseurs of the oeuvre of the architect Adolf Loos.