Jaroslav J. Králík

Though as a painter and printmaker Jaroslav Králík (1924–1999) displayed a mastery of a unique an innovative style, his oeuvre has somehow remained relatively unknown to the wider public. A symbolic repayment of this debt is the extensive publication prepared by the artist’s son, forming a dignified confirmation of Králík’s definitive place among Czech artists of the later 20th century. Among his fellow students at the Prague Academy in the atelier of Emil Filla were, for instance, Čestmír Kafka and the sisters Jitka and Květa Válová, while forming personal links later in his career with František Tichý or Kamil Lhoták. The range of his creative interests was truly broad, from monumental realisations for architecture or public spaces (tapestries, art protis, stained glass) to intimate sketches, prints, or collages, most notably working with quotations from the paintings of the old masters, most often Hieronymus Bosch, Matthias Grünewald, Pieter Bruegel, Albrecht Dürer, Piero della Francesco or Sandro Botticelli; no less fascinating for him was the aesthetic of handwritten or printed texts. Králík’s unique artistic language, with its echoes of metaphysical painting, Surrealism, or Symbolism, opens a wide space for deeper cosmological questions along with reflections on the world around us and humanity’s role within it.