Bohumila Doleželová
Born on 12 November 1922 in Prostějov Died on 30 December 1993 in Telč Academic painter
Doleželová graduated from the Academy of Graphic Arts in Prague where she studied under Professor F. Pukl, under whom she then worked for 4 years as his assistant. She had considerable success with graphic art, but later she turned to painting which allowed her better to express her life philosophy.
At that time she and her husband J. Mareš moved to a deserted brickyard near the Jihlávka stream, and later to a village cottage in Klátovec. It was only after a Mexican art dealer bought the whole collection of her pictures exhibited in the Gallery of the Highlands in Jihlava (in 1967) that she bought a house in Telč where she spent the rest of her life.
Her work was inspired by Byzantine icons; another source of inspiration was oriental art. She was also influenced by Pablo Neruda, Mexican painters and by the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca.
She looked for the source of pure and simple life among the Gypsies. In this connection she began to be dubbed “the painter of the Gypsies”. She created approximately six hundred pictures with this topic, gaining world-wide fame. Her pictures are to be found in Mexico, USA, Paris, Tel Aviv, and many other places. Czech public knows her well from her 1960 illustrations of a volume of Gypsy fairy tales.
One of her best known works is the fresco on the Jihlava pharmacy at Masaryk square, other works are exhibited in the Gallery of the Highlands and in the hotel Gustav Mahler. In Prague her extensive fresco adorns four walls of the former wine-cellar Beograd, and the picture of country pilgrimage decorates the department store on the corner of Wenceslas Square and Jindřišská Street.
Loneliness she suffered from after the death of her closest relatives, brought her to a conversion to Christianity and to the painting of Biblical, especially New Testament motifs, with her works acquiring a new spiritual and philosophical dimension. She bequeathed a collection of 450 of her pictures to the Dominican monastery in Jihlava which on 9 November 1995 opened a permanent exhibition of both her pictures and the pictures of her husband J. Mareš.
(The Catalogue of the Permanent Gallery in the Dominican monastery in Jihlava of 1995; Periodical Zuzana, No. 4, 1994; Jihlavské listy, 14 January 1994: J. Sedlák, “The Painter of Big Eyes”.)
(zk)
Doleželová graduated from the Academy of Graphic Arts in Prague where she studied under Professor F. Pukl, under whom she then worked for 4 years as his assistant. She had considerable success with graphic art, but later she turned to painting which allowed her better to express her life philosophy.
At that time she and her husband J. Mareš moved to a deserted brickyard near the Jihlávka stream, and later to a village cottage in Klátovec. It was only after a Mexican art dealer bought the whole collection of her pictures exhibited in the Gallery of the Highlands in Jihlava (in 1967) that she bought a house in Telč where she spent the rest of her life.
Her work was inspired by Byzantine icons; another source of inspiration was oriental art. She was also influenced by Pablo Neruda, Mexican painters and by the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca.
She looked for the source of pure and simple life among the Gypsies. In this connection she began to be dubbed “the painter of the Gypsies”. She created approximately six hundred pictures with this topic, gaining world-wide fame. Her pictures are to be found in Mexico, USA, Paris, Tel Aviv, and many other places. Czech public knows her well from her 1960 illustrations of a volume of Gypsy fairy tales.
One of her best known works is the fresco on the Jihlava pharmacy at Masaryk square, other works are exhibited in the Gallery of the Highlands and in the hotel Gustav Mahler. In Prague her extensive fresco adorns four walls of the former wine-cellar Beograd, and the picture of country pilgrimage decorates the department store on the corner of Wenceslas Square and Jindřišská Street.
Loneliness she suffered from after the death of her closest relatives, brought her to a conversion to Christianity and to the painting of Biblical, especially New Testament motifs, with her works acquiring a new spiritual and philosophical dimension. She bequeathed a collection of 450 of her pictures to the Dominican monastery in Jihlava which on 9 November 1995 opened a permanent exhibition of both her pictures and the pictures of her husband J. Mareš.
(The Catalogue of the Permanent Gallery in the Dominican monastery in Jihlava of 1995; Periodical Zuzana, No. 4, 1994; Jihlavské listy, 14 January 1994: J. Sedlák, “The Painter of Big Eyes”.)
(zk)
VLOŽIL: Terezie Veselá (31.05.2012)
, UPRAVIL:
Eliška Rodová (20.11.2020)
