Jan Karpíšek

Who is Jan Karpíšek?

Jan Karpíšek is a Czech contemporary painter. He was born in 1981 in Jihlava, grew up in the South Bohemian town of Třeboň. He now lives in Brno. Between 1999 and 2005 Karpíšek studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology, at a studio led by Professor Martin Mainer. He then spent a half year in the art studio of performance of Professor Tomáš Ruller.

Karpíšek's work is characterized by topics such as, effluxion, the erotic, and, above all, spirituality. He is deeply concerned with meditation and a number of his paintings are records of perception of the body system and soul; however, his paintings show no formal unity. Karpíšek's style sometimes evokes naivism or the grotesque, and at other times is similar to a gestic abstraction. Karpíšek is also concerned with action painting, natural pigments and conceptual performance painting. As a matter of fact, the topic of his bachelor and master work was time. He won the Prize of Dean 2003 for his bachelor work; his large-format paintings that might be reminiscent of works by Gerhard Richter and Barnett Newman In 2004, Karpíšek was awarded second place in the students' competition Artkontakt.