Artists

Joža Uprka was a Czech painter and graphic artist. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany. At the latter, he was one of the founders of the Czech student organisation called ‘Škréta’, which included fellow artists like Alfons Mucha, Pavol Socháň, and Luděk Marold. In the early 1890s, he studied in Paris on a scholarship and in 1894 he received an ‘honourable mention’ for his painting Pilgrimage to St. Anthony that was exhibited at the Salon. In 1897, he held his first major exhibition in Prague. Uprka was from a rural part of southern Moravia (now in the eastern part of the Czech Republic), and he drew much of his artistic inspiration from the people, culture, and landscape of this region. He returned to there in 1897 and became a leading figure in the Moravian art world. His art, which combined elements of Impressionism and Art Nouveau, is celebrated for the honest portrayal of the life and traditions of Moravia.

In 1995, a Joža Uprka gallery was opened in Prague and in the early 2010s a permanent exhibition was installed in the town of Uherské Hradiště. From October 2018 to March 2019, the first USA exhibition of Uprka’s work was mounted at the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The exhibition then travelled to the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 5 November to 1 December 2019.