Oldřich Kulhánek
1940–2013 · Czech painter, graphic artist and illustrator
Oldřich Kulhánek (Prague, 1940 – Prague, 2013) was a Czech painter, graphic designer, illustrator, stage designer and teacher. His work is tied to the design of the current Czech banknotes and postage stamps, which brought his art into the everyday lives of many people.
He studied from 1958 at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, in the studio of Karel Svolinský, and graduated in 1964 with illustration cycles for the poetry of Vladimír Holan and Christian Morgenstern. Between 1968 and 1971 he made a graphic series that included a distorted portrait of Stalin and perforated red stars, which the authorities judged ideologically dangerous and ordered destroyed. In 1971 the StB, the Czechoslovak secret police, arrested him for defamation of the allied socialist states. He spent a month in prison, was questioned regularly for the next two years, and was banned from publishing.
In the 1980s he produced lithographs inspired by the development of the human body. After the Velvet Revolution he travelled to the United States and attended a lithography workshop in Los Angeles, and he often visited Belgium to study the old masters. He was a member of the Czech graphic artists' association Hollar. His works are held by institutions such as the Library of Congress, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Albertina and the Art Institute of Chicago. He died suddenly in Prague at the age of 72; one of his last graphic works was inspired by the Book of Job.