Tomáš Císařovský was born in Prague in 1962. With both his parents having signed Charter 77, the future artist’s position on Communism was immediately clear. Trained in Prague at the SUPŠ (Secondary School of Industry and Art) as a woodworker from 1978 to 1982, he moved on to study art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, from 1983 to 1988. During his studies and beyond, he exhibited with his peers at unofficial gatherings called ‘Confrontations’, through which he built a rebellious network.
From a technical point of view, Císařovský purposefully conserves an academic or traditional approach. His subjects – portraits, historical figures and later landscapes – are all well-established genres. His preferred technique, oil painting, also confers an academic edge to his image. The painter explains this choice as being due to its animalistic bodily substance: flexible, malleable and ultimately incredibly versatile. Watercolours later round out his arsenal.
The painter’s evolution and progress are marked by cycles. Among the most celebrated are: From Legionnaire Grandfather’s Diary (1988), describing the march of Czech legionnaires in Russia; No Horses (1994–1996), a portrait series of ‘resituated’ Czech nobility; portraits of persons with disabilities from the late 1990s; Stale Time, depicting pop music stars from the normalisation era; and Havel, a biographical series created using a large series of pen and wash works on paper. Each cycle is accompanied by its dedicated chromatic palette and ambiance.
The advent of the 21st century saw Císařovský introduce landscape into his corpus; a surprising yet thrilling approach to the genre. Dreamy, saturated scenery with an other-world-like quality is the best way one can describe these works. The painter had already experimented with natural scenes of the Kokořín region as a teenager, but completely abandoned the genre since.