Jan Kutálek was born in Prague on 20 July, 1917. After studying painting and sculpture, he concentrated exclusively on ceramics from 1940, when he discovered the creative possibilities of clay. From the very beginning he worked on figural ceramics and found his own means of expression in a synthesis of plastic shape and color.

It would be difficult to span the whole range of his themes. Fairy-tales, fables, customs, dances and songs, music and poetry, tales from ancient and Slav mythology, medieval legends, typical characters from the Czech and Moravian country-side, fairs, circuses, jazz, religious, legendary and exotic themes, animals and birds, are all but a small part of Kutálek's inner world, of his poetic imagination. The ...