Ferdiš Dusa ( January 13, 1888 in Frýdlant nad Ostravicí - December 1, 1958 ) painter, graphic artist and ceramist

At the age of fifteen, he started to work in a local enamelware factory and as a decorator he first met professional artists. Between 1905 and 1910 he made trips to discover almost all of Europe in order to learn the basics of painting crafts in pottery workshops and ateliers' studios. Trained by a porcelain painter. In Germany he was a pupil of M.Slegvot. Around 1912 he made contact with B. Jaroňek of Rožnov, with whom he founded a ceramic workshop. A year later he met the director of the Medical Institute for Alcoholics in Velké Kunčice, B. Koňařík-Bečvan, who introduced work in the workshops as a therapeutic agent and Duša became the head of the ceramic workshop and porcelain painter. The First World War ended the activities of the institute and workshops, and on June 21, Duša enlisted in the Russian front in eastern Galicia. In 1916 he became a documentary painter of war. After returning from the war, he discontinued his membership in the Koliba Association, of which he was a co-founder, and in order to secure his artistic future and the existence of his life he tried to do business himself. In 1918 he bought ceramic workshops and transferred them to his birthplace. He failed in business and had to shut down the workshops in 1924. In the mid-1920s he focused on painting and graphics. He participated in the artists' life and alternately lived in Fryndlant and Prague. At the end of his life in 1955 he returned to his hometown.
In his work he focused mainly on graphic art, his theme was his experience from life in the Ostrava and Tesin regions. In his lyrical-epic works he returns to his lasting and profound love - Slovakia, which has been crisscrossed. The beginnings of his graphic works date back to the First World War, he was predominantly a wood engraving technique (later etched and dry-pointed) and liked to express himself in extensive and often large cycles. He usually illustrates books that are close to the state of his soul and heart (Death of Janosik, Silesian Songs, Ostrava Song, novels of Heap and Hordubal, Fairy Tales of the Twelve Souls, At the Bright Flame and many others). Dusa's graphic work - not only marginally - includes exlibris, where he managed to achieve maximum artistic effect on a small area. Duša created several dozen book marks. He focused mainly on painting in the 1920s and after 1945.
He was a member of Koliba (the community of artistic creation in Moravia), the Association of Czech Graphic Artists Hollar, the Group of Fine Artists in Brno, the Art Discussion in Prague, the Block of Fine Artists, the Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists and others. His works are represented in the National Gallery, the National Museum in Prague, the Moravian Museum in Brno, the Silesian Museum in Opava, the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava, the Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava, the District Museum in Frenstat and the Ferdis Dusa Memorial in Frýdlant nad Ostravici. Abroad in the State Gallery in Warsaw, the collection of William Ritter in Switzerland and many other private in our country and abroad.