Georges Kars (Jiří Karpeles) was a Czech painter born in Kralupy in 1880, though some sources give 1882, and died in Geneva in 1945. He was part of the School of Paris movement, and his output includes female portraits, nudes, landscapes and still lifes.
He studied in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck. From 1905 he travelled to Madrid, where he met Juan Gris and became interested in Velázquez and Goya. In 1908 he settled in Montmartre, at the height of the Cubist revolution, and kept company with Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo. The First World War interrupted his work.
In 1933 he bought a house in Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava, and in 1935 he helped inaugurate the town's municipal museum as a modern art museum. During the Second World War he took refuge in Lyon, where he drew children with sad expressions, and later in Switzerland, where he made many works about refugees. He took his own life in Geneva in February 1945, most likely after learning of the deaths of relatives.
After his wife Nora died in 1966, the contents of his studio were auctioned in Paris, and Pierre Lévy and Oscar Ghez acquired many of his works. In 1983 the Museum of Modern Art in Troyes organised the first retrospective of his work.