František Muzika ( June 26, 1900 Prague - November 1, 1974 Prague ) painter, illustrator, book graphic artist, set designer

He studied with professors J. Loukota, V. Nechleba, J. Obrovsky, J. Stursa and K. Krattner at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague ( 1918 - 1924 ) , then a one-year scholarship stay in France. He worked as a professor at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague ( 1938 ) and from 1945 to 1970 as a professor at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. Since 1921 a member of Devetsil, since 1923 a member of SVU Manes, a member of The Hollar Association of Czech Graphic Artists. In the beginnings of painting, in the spirit of contemporary social painting, he created a number of figural compositions and landscapes, the deliberately primitivizing form of which he enriched with a poetic touch of magical realism. His still lifes, based on the concept of lyrical cubism, date from the 1930s, and in the second half of the 1930s he came to an imaginative painting close to Surrealism. In this way, he painted his inner ideas in the form of metamorphosed things and characters. The work increasingly emerged from orthodox surrealism until it came to pure artistic lyricism. He created his own world of imagination, growing mostly from the microcosm of organic and inorganic nature. From the early 1950s, his fantasies took the form of cellular tissues and cobwebs ( the Trees cycle ) . In the second half of the 1950s, the painter used entire areas of the painting ( Swamp, Nike, City ) . New shapes and new forms brought cycles of Mounds, Shells in Blue and Red and Totems. The 1960s then meant a return to the painting of vague poetic objects ( the cycle of Elsinors and Citadels ) . In addition to painting, he devoted himself to free, applied and small graphics, illustrations, typography, caricatures, art criticism and scenography, while he significantly influenced all these fields.
Solo exhibitions
1928, 1930 (Aventine Mansard), 1931, 1933 - Prague, 1931 - Brno, Vanek's Gallery, 1946 - Prague, Horejs's Gallery, group exhibition - Hradec Kralové, 1963 - Usti nad Orlici - Prague, 1964 - Prague, Fronta Gallery, 1976 - Prague, Fronta Gallery, Scenicka tvorba, 1977 - Prague, Fronta Gallery, Books, 1979 Roudnice nad Labem, Gallery of Fine Arts, Paintings from 1933 - 1977, 1981 - Prague, NG, Wallenstein Riding School, Life Work, 2000 - Prague , VSUP Exhibition Hall (retrospective)