Karel Teige was a Czech theoretician of art and architecture, an artist and typographer, and an organizer of the Czech avant-garde. He was one of the founders of Devětsil, an association of Czech avant-garde artists, and a spokesman of the Surrealist Group of Czechoslovakia. He maintained contacts with numerous European avant-garde artists and informed the Czech art milieu about the latest developments. As author of several manifestos and art theories, Teige was instrumental in the emergence of a range of new artistic genres such as picture poems, Poetism, and Artificialism in the 1920s.