Oldřich Lajsek

Biography

In the spring of 1944, in Kutná Hora, Oldřich Lajsek passed his school-leaving examinations at the higher industrial school, where the subject was mechanical engineering. He had no thought of becoming an artist then.

He was born on 8 February 1925 in Křesetice, near Kutná Hora, into a merchant family. In Kutná Hora he finished primary and upper primary school, then the technical school. During the occupation he took part in the resistance, in an organization called Pěst (“The Fist”); because of this he later became a member of the Czech Union of Freedom Fighters.

After the war he moved to Prague. He worked briefly in a design office, then at the Union of Czechoslovak Industry. From 1946 he studied at the Faculty of Education of Charles University, in the department of art education and descriptive geometry. There, according to accounts that have come down, he grew close to art; the teachers named include Cyril Bouda, Martin Salcman, Karel Lidický and Josef Sejpka. He completed the course in 1950, qualified to teach geography as well, and became a teacher. From 1955 he taught at the School of Applied Arts in Prague. Later he completed a course in economics and in 1966 received an engineering title.

At first he painted almost privately, but he made his way fairly quickly. He was accepted into the Štursa society (by one account in 1953, by another in 1955), and later into the Patriotic Centre. From 1954 he was a member of the Union of Czechoslovak Creative Artists. He took part in the competition for the redesign of the National Theatre’s premises and in the Jirásek competition.

In 1960 he and others founded the Group of Eight Artists, and he became its head. The group organized educational and artistic events outside the usual cultural centres, in villages and small towns, and looked for new possibilities for exhibitions. His work was shown in Kutná Hora, Prague, Bratislava, Benešov nad Ploučnicí and Čelákovice; in Prague the venues included the Chamber Theatre, the Dílo gallery in Vodičkova Street and the gallery of the Czechoslovak Writers’ Union. Abroad he had solo exhibitions in Łódź and Katowice, and he took part in a group exhibition of Prague graphic artists in Paris.

The core of his legacy, to my mind, is landscape. He painted the surroundings of Kutná Hora, Říp mountain, the Elbe lowlands, the Central Bohemian Uplands and the streets of Prague, and from his travels he brought back Greek and Yugoslav subjects: the excavations near Delphi, Yugoslav views. He built his compositions firmly and abstracted form slightly; he was interested in the geological and tectonic structure of the terrain. He often returned to the theme of the four seasons; the best-known cycle on it, “Spring”, “Summer”, “Autumn” and “Winter”, is dated 1985. Other works named include “Burning Lidice” (1974), “From the Underground Station” (1982), “Acropolis” (1983) and “A Red Landscape” (1985).

In the 1960s he worked a great deal in abstract painting: dark pictures on board in bluish tones, with indistinct contours, at times verging on expressive drama. Works associated with this include “White” (1957), “The Mirror” (1962) and “Blue” (1963). Less space in his work went to realist subjects (“A Morning in Prague”, 1983), flower still lifes (“Sunflowers”, 1971), surrealism (“The Sorrow”, 1959) and religious motifs, among them “Crucifixion” (1983). He rarely painted people. He worked in oil, tempera, graphic techniques and mixed media on canvas, wood and paper, and produced posters, promotional catalogues and brochures.

A separate part of his work concerned interiors. He designed the hall of the Agricultural University in Prague-Suchdol, the aviation museum in Prague-Kbely and the hall of the Institute of Vocational Education in Prague, and made glass walls for the Brčálník hotel in the Šumava, for the ČKD Kompresory office building in Prague, for a state villa in Prague-Troja and for the Zlatý lev interhotel in Liberec.

In 1985 he received the state honour For Excellent Work. In all he created about 3,000 works, more than 1,800 of which went to private collections.

Lajsek died in Prague on 2 October 2001, at the age of seventy-six. He is buried in the Vinohrady Cemetery. In 2025 a commemoration was held at the Dačický House in Kutná Hora to mark the centenary of his birth.