Tag: czech republic

Ludvík Vacátko

The Paintings of Ludvík Vacátko

Born on the19th of August in 1873 in Simmering, a district of Vienna, Ludvík Vacátko was an Austrian-Hungarian painter, sculptor and professor of drawing who later relocated to the Czech Republic. As a painter, his work contained genre landscape scenes, figurative works and battle scenes. Horses, however, their anatomy and role in human life and history became the central theme of Vacátko’s life and work. Although the role of the horse began to slowly and inevitably disappear in people’s lives, Vacátko still rode a horse around the city.

After graduating from Prague’s military school, Ludvík Vacátko taught drawing classes to its cadets. He continued his art studies at Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts and later at Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts under Professor Nejedli. After fulfilling his military service, Vacátko devoted himself to his career as an artist and became an expert in the depiction of animal anatomy. His artistic influences came from the works of painters George Židlického and Franz Liebl.

In early 1898, Vacátko was asked by Czech painter Luděk Marold to collaborate on a gigantic panorama of the Battle of Lipany for an upcoming exhibition in Prague. Three other artists also worked on the battle scene: painter Karel Raška, landscape painter Václav Jansa, and colorist Theodor Hilšer. The panorama measured eleven meters high by ninety-five meters long.The stress of completing this huge work on schedule had a fatal effect on Marold’s already fragile health; he died shortly after it went on display in 1898.

At the turn of century, Ludvík Vacátko founded a private painting and drawing  school in Prague, among his students was the painter Jindřich Prucha who studied under Vacátko in the years 1907 and 1908. Mobilized at the start of World War I, Prucha was later killed at the Galician front in September of 1914 at the age of twenty-seven. 

In 1928, Vacátko published the book “Painting Animals”. He participated in the art competitions at the 1932 Summer Olympics which were held in Los Angeles, California. With the assistance of his friend Auguste Rodin, he became a member of Paris’s Union des Beauz Arts et Lettres. In 1943, Vacátko relocated to the city of Kunvald  in the Czech Republic where he lived until his death on the 26th of November in 1956. His body is buried in the city of Pardubice.

Note: An extensive collection of Ludvík Vacátko’s paintings and sculptures can be found in Petr Kmošek Kona’s 2018 “V ZiVotě a Obrazech Malíře Ludvík Vacátko” which is located at: https://www.nzm.cz/file/b7f5584224aff8bf79b9a0b701cddfc6/15707/kone.pdf

Top Insert Photo: Photographer Unknown, “Ludvík Vacátko”, Ralph Schlüter Archives

Middle Insert Image: Ludvík Vacátko, “Tillage”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, 56 x 79 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Ludvík Vacátko, “Self Portrait”, Date Unknown, Oil on Cardboard, 64 x 50 cm, Private Collection

Vojtěch Kovařík

Paintings by Vojtěch Kovařík

Born in 1993, Vojtěch Kovařík is a Czech artist who lives and works in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, located in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. He received both his BA and MA at the Faculty of Arts of the Ostrava University in the Czech Republic; he also studied Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland. 

Kovařík has devoted himself to painting, mixing classical influences with a contemporary style. In his exploration of Greek mythology and European identity, he creates exaggerated figures evocative of the ancient Greek heroes. Kovařík’s large-format works, displaying their strong, muscled characters  with mottled skin tones and textures, are achieved through a technique of spray, acrylic, and oil painting. Set in abstract surroundings, represented by mere symbols, these strong figures are the central focus for the viewer.

Kovařík has participated in several residency projects including The Fores Project for emerging artists in London, Los Angeles’s The Cabin, and the curatorial and residency L21 x Camper Foundation in Palma, Spain. Among his recent solo exhibitions are “Lovers and Fighters” at the Public Gallery in London, “Landscapes of Muscle” at Galerie Dukla in Ostrava, Czech Republic, and “Hidden Garden” at the 2020 Galerie Derouillon in Paris.  

Petr Bambousek

Petr Bambousek, “Iguana Iguana”

Petr Bambousek is a photographer living and working in the city of Pribram in the Central Bohemian region of the Czech Republic. This photo won the Cactus Award for the Category 4; Reptile Portrait.

The Nactus Award is an herpetological photography competition. Its purpose is to discover the best reptile and amphibian pictures taken by photographers worldwide and to inspire their visionary and expressive interpretations of nature. The competition is open to anyone, amateur or professional, of any legal age and of any nationality. As only digital images are accepted in the competition, the judges place emphasis on ensuring that the images faithfully represent nature.

Felix Jenewein

Paintings by Felix Jenewein

Felix Jenewein (1857-1905) was a Czech painter and illustrator. As a student in Prague at the Vienna Academy, he belonged to the generation of the National Theatre . After his studies, he worked most of his life in Prague as an illustrator and later taught at the Brno University of Technology.

Felix Jenewein created especially vivid historical works, in which he visualized  the Nazarene Catholic morality. His artwork was well known in his homeland for its dark realism, particularly in his homeland and was received with great enthusiasm in Vienna. In Kutna Hora, the Galerie Felix Janewein has a collection of his works.