Otakar Nejedly ( March 14, 1883 Roudnice nad Labem - June 17, 1957 Prague ) painter, pedagogue and illustrator

He studied at the private school of F. Engelmüller 1898 - 1901 and privately with Antonin Slavicek from 1904, which influenced his color and led him to a relaxed manuscript. Thanks to a scholarship, he stayed in Rome in 1896 and in India and Ceylon from 1907 to 1910, together with the painter Hnevkovsky. This path significantly influenced his entire later work, where he focused mainly on color and the tendency to monumentalize the landscape. He was a legendary professor of the landscape school at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1925 to 1957. He was very popular among his students with the nickname Otas. In the years 1925 - 1939 he traveled with pupils for art stays in France, Italy, Dalmatia and in the years 1946 - 1957 he stayed with them in various places in our country. A member of the Association of Fine Artists Mánes since 1904, in 1926 he became a full member of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts, a corresponding member of the Hagenbund in Vienna. He was a supporter of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Together with the painter Vincenc Benes, they opened their own Modern School of Painting in 1913 on the basis of their influence by the Parisian Cubists. After 1918 he painted a battlefield in France, later an exotic landscape in Sicily and he also found inspiration in our country in Sumava, Orlicke Mountains, Tabor and in the Bohemian Central Mountains. He gradually left the cubist phase of his work, for a more descriptive, more realistic view based on effective to dark colors in a dramatically conceived landscape. Artistically, it went through a period from Impressionism, through Cubism and Fauvism, to the neo-romantic joyous return to the landscape. His pedagogical activity was especially significant, where he educated many Czech modern landscape painters. His works are represented in the National Gallery in Prague and many other state galleries, as well as in the War Museum in Paris. He exhibited independently in 1917, 1918, 1933, 1954 in Prague, in 1963 in Litomerice, 1965 in Roudnice nad Labem, in 1973 in Liberec, in 1974 in Brno and in 1988 in Pardubice. He has exhibited collectively since 1900 at home and abroad. He also devoted himself to publishing and marginally devoted himself to the creation of exlibris.