Karel Nepraš

Karel Nepraš (2 April 1932 – 5 April 2002) was a Czech sculptor, draughtsman, graphic artist and professor at Prague Academy. Already in the 1960s, Nepraš became one of the most prominent Czech artists thanks to his ability to master new materials, techniques and technologies and creatively exploit them. His original work has also been recognized abroad. Through playfulness, subversive irony and bitter humour, he has kept himself free from pathos, pretension and any ideological cliché. Nepraš's work is often classified as part of the so-called Czech Grotesque, which partly overlapped with New Figuration, but the term was rather a substitute for such notions as alienation, absurdity and manipulation, which were unacceptable to the then communist regime. With the rapid deterioration of state cultural policy under normalization, the grotesque acted as a distinctly intellectual commentary on reality. According to art historian Jan Kříž, there are only a few sculptors in the world who could so perfectly connect the tragicomedy of human existence with the tragicomedy of general history.

The period of normalization he experienced in difficult existential conditions, without the possibility to exhibit and in seclusion. He received recognition again only after the fall of the communist regime, when he was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. A number of prominent personalities emerged from the Karel Nepraš School Socha 1, such as the sculptors Paulina Skavova, Martina Hozová, Klára Klose and Markéta Korečková, the sculptors Karel Bartáček, Zdeněk Šmíd, Vít Novotný, Ján Macko and the painter MICL. In addition to teaching students, Nepraš devoted himself intensively to his own work and is considered one of the most original representatives of New Figuration.

Life Karel Nepraš was born on 2 April 1932 in Prague into the family of a bank clerk. Thanks to his art teacher at the town school, who encouraged his interest in drawing and advised him, he saw several exhibitions before the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état. In 1948–1951, he graduated from the Secondary Industrial Ceramic School in Prague, where Bedřich Dlouhý also studied. In 1952 he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in the sculpture studio of Prof. Jan Lauda, and in 1958 he graduated as an academic sculptor.

Before the war, Jan Lauda was a leading representative of so-called social art and had excellent training (pupil of Jan Štursa, shared studio with Otto Gutfreund). He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and in 1951 he was awarded the State Prize of Klement Gottwald for his bust of V. I. Lenin. Karel Nepraš was a prominent student of Lauda, and his professor actively protected him, giving him repeatedly excellent marks in sculpture. He also saved him from being expelled from Academy when Nepraš repeatedly failed exams in Marxism-Leninism and Lauda convinced the examining comrade to give him at least a C. At the end of his studies he defended Nepraš's diploma thesis - an unconventional monument to the pioneer of aeronautics E. Čihák. From the practice of the ceramicist and the principles of the Lauda school on the necessity to maintain the solid construction of the sculpture, Nepraš took away the inclination towards a convex shape, which "is the vault that holds the space"

Šmidra group In the oppressive atmosphere of the communist regime of the 1950s, the general spying and the emphasis on teaching Marxism–Leninism and socialist realism at the Academy, personal friendships and private gatherings of students were more important than school. Nepraš and his friends were aware that they stood completely outside official art, and prank was a necessary common self-defence.

Together with his classmates Jan Koblasa, Bedřich Dlouhý and musicians Rudolf Komorous, Libor Pešek and Jan Klusák, he founded the Club (in the manner of English gentlemen's clubs), which prepared a joint Dadaist event of artists, actors and musicians Malmuzherciáda (abbreviated in English would be: PaintActMus-ade) in the Club of Unitarians (Dec. 19, 1954). Nepraš exhibited the painting Green Mother Destroying Her Child. The painter Ladislav Placatka and the composer Jan Bedřich also took part and a joint composition Eine kleine Dadamusik (with the phrases Duchaminulost, Duchapřítomnost, Duchabudoucnost) was performed. After this event some left the "Club" and the remaining members - Karel Nepraš, Jan Koblasa, Bedřich Dlouhý and Rudolf Komorous continued to meet as Šmidra group (Jaroslav Vožniak joined in 1955). In 1955, Nepraš participated as a designer in the performance Two Ballets at Ledebur Gardens (Malá Strana), for which the libretto wrote Jan Koblasa.

The activities of the Šmidra group, in addition to regular meetings, recessional events and formalised rituals with fragmentary collaborative literary activities, continued after they finished studies at the Prague Academy. Nepraš brought a performative playful talent to the club and cultivated the scope of drawing. Later he played the violin. The ten-year history of the "Šmidra group" was commemorated by an exhibition in Ostrov nad Ohří in 1965, prepared by the theoretician of the group Jan Kříž, the author of the general term "strangeness" for their works. In 1968, the first Prague exhibition of the "Šmidra group" took place in Václav Špála Gallery, later reprised in Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové.

As the political atmosphere relaxed and the need to devote themselves to their own work, activity of "Šmidra group" gradually diminished. "Šmidra group" briefly reunited in 1962 with the founding of the Paleta vlasti (Palette of the Fatherland) hockey club. In addition to Koblasa, Nepraš and Dlouhý, the founding members were Hugo Demartini, Theodor Pištěk, Josef Klimeš, Karel Kouba, Milan Stibůrek (the only hockey player, member of the Sparta B-team), Bohumil Němeček, Radek Venclík and Jan Vachuda. In the 1960s the Palette of the Fatherland club was active, among others, in the Baráčnická rychta. The Palette of the Fatherland amateur activities, dance parties and cabarets were at least as popular throughout the 1960s as the chats of Sklep Theatre in the 1970s. In 1992, a delegation of the club presented the Palette of the Fatherland Award to Václav Havel.

The reconstruction of the activities of the Šmidra group was made possible by Jan Koblasa, who published his diary entries and sent a questionnaire to living members in 2004–2005.

Crusader School As an author of drawings for magazines, Nepraš met the artist Jan Steklík and in 1963, in the company of those meeting in the pub U Křižovníků (At Crusaders), they founded the Crusader School of pure humour without jokes, where he and Steklík took turns as directors. The free association of the Crusader School was a completely unique creative phenomenon, which, as a distinctive parallel to the Fluxus movement, connected everyday reality with art, with the ambition to enter the social or natural environment. It promoted the so-called aesthetics of "weirdness" and gave rise to the Czech visual grotesque. Slavíková places the Crusader School among the neo-avant-garde movements of the 1960s and 1970s, which sought to cross the boundaries between life and art through play.

The Crusader School, which moved from the closed pub U Křižovníků to the U Svitáků pub in 1968, to the Zlatý soudek in Ostrovní in 1970, and then back to U Svitáků, revived its activity after the occupation in 1968 at the beginning of normalization. Musical activities of the Midsummer Night's Dream Band (founder Karel Nepraš (violin), Miloslav Hájek, Milan Čech, Petr Lampl, Vratislav Brabenec) and The Plastic People of the Universe, happenings, trips from Prague to the sources of the Vltava River or climbing Říp, wake-up calls to Blaník knights, "collecting beer samples", ephemeral joint projects (staging The Bartered Bride in the U Svitáků pub) were part of collective mental regeneration, but were not directly related to the artistic activities of the members. According to Olaf Hanel, the main activity was "the shift of nonsense into everyday rituals in an atmosphere of pub romance."

In 1991, when the retrospective exhibition of the Crusader School was held at the Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové, there were over 40 full members and a wider circle of over 60 others. Strict criteria were applied for the admission of new members - in particular, to demonstrate the ability to be creatively oneself and to be able to respect the never established rules of the game, which could only be derived from a specific situation. In 1999, Ben Patterson (a founding figure of the Fluxus movement) and the German painter Annegret Heinl were accepted as new members.

1960s In 1960 and then in 1962 and 1963 Nepraš exhibited his drawings for the first time (Rokoko Theatre, Paravan Theatre, Regional Gallery in Liberec). In 1964 he participated in the Exhibition D in Nová síň Gallery in Prague and the exhibition Sculpture 1964 in Liberec, he had a solo exhibition at Gallery on Charles Square, which was run by Ludmila Vachtová, he began to publish his drawings in the magazines Host do domu, Before the beginning of normalization, he lost the possibility to publish cartoon humour in Dikobraz magazine and other periodicals, and in the following years he devoted himself to free drawing and graphic art.

In 1964, Karel Nepraš married the artist and poet Naděžda Plíšková. In 1975 they had a daughter, Karolína, later married Kračková, who is also an artist.

From the mid-1960s onwards, Karel Nepraš gradually established himself as a draughtsman and sculptor, participating in important exhibitions at home and abroad, and his work was of interest to galleries and art collectors. In 1965 he exhibited at the La Biennale internationale des jeunes artistes in Paris and at the Jeune avant-garde tchécoslovaque exhibition at the Lambert Gallery in Paris, and in 1967 at the Exhibition of Contemporary Czechoslovak Art in Turin. He received several awards for his sculptures (Stockholm, Písek, at the exhibition Fantasy Aspects at the Václav Špála Gallery, Jihlava).

In 1968, Nepraš and Naděžda Plíšková attended a symposium in Stuttgart and spent six months there. During this stay Nepraš, among other things, learned the technique of working with cast iron.

In 1969, Karel Nepraš was awarded a Ford Foundation scholarship, but the Communist authorities refused to allow him to leave the country.

In 1971 Nepraš participated in the 6. International Ceramics Symposium in Hradec Králové and returned to ceramics, which he had previously studied at secondary school. In 1972, he had a joint exhibition with Jan Steklík at the Brno House of Art, organized by Jiří Valoch. Nepraš lost the opportunity to present his works and was forced to make a living from restoration. He had a personal and creative crisis (Self-portrait - cemetery sculpture, 1973, Attempted suicide, 1976–1977, New Year's cards – e.g. for the year of Charter 77 with two gallows) and between 1974 and 1987 he almost resigned to both drawing and sculpture. He lacked the energy and motivation to complete his sculptures. The artistic activity on the borderline between creation and everyday life, as practiced by the members of the Crusader School, automatically found itself on the periphery or on the scrap-heap of culture. Nepraš's sculptures from that time continue the Dadaist, Duchampian orientation of modern art and create early forms of conceptual art on the Czech art scene, in which the objecthood and technique of the world we live in are asserted.

In the 1970s there were underground performances of the Midsummer Night's Dream Band, where Nepraš performed as a violinist. He participated in the unofficial First Festival of Second Culture in Postupice in 1974.

In 1978, a unique Nepraš exhibition was held at the Sonnenring Galerie, Münster, organized by Jan Kříž. Meda Mládková included Nepraš in the exhibition Eleven Contemporary Artists from Prague in New York (1980) and Ann Arbor (1981). In 1983 he was represented in the exhibition Czech Drawing of the 20th Century from the Collections of the Regional Gallery of Fine Arts in Olomouc, organized by Pavel Zatloukal. In 1984, thanks to František Šmejkal, his drawings were presented at the exhibition Dessins tchèques du 20e siècle (Czech Drawing of the 20th Century) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. In 1984, Vlastimil Tetiva organized an exhibition of Nepraš's drawings at the small House of Culture in České Budějovice.

New opportunities to exhibit appeared in the late 1980s. In the 1980s these were first unofficial exhibitions in improvised spaces (ÚMCH Gallery (Makráč), Gallery H, People's house in Vysočany, Opatov Gallery, Vojanovy sady, Forum 1988, Salon of Prague Artists '88, Litvínov Theatre, 1989) or exhibitions abroad (Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna 1987/1988, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., 1988, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, 1988, Warsaw, 1988). Thanks to his friendship with Jiří Sopko, Nepraš took part in the Basel Art Fair in 1987. With the return of the possibility to present his works, Nepraš has regained new vitality to free creation.

Nepraš as a teacher valued openness and directness and hated posturing. He communicated rather extra-verbally and relied on the sculptural intelligence of his students, emphasising content, meaning and significance; the search for form was an afterthought. Part of the teaching methodology was the problem of shape and proportion and the solution of the relationship between content and form. He was a natural and generally respected authority for students and the AVU management and allowed students to consult with other teachers. No one usually transferred from his studio to another. The close and friendly relationship of the students to their professor is evidenced by the internal renaming of the studio to Karel Nepraš Lesbian School, an annual party for Nepraš's birthday, a spontaneously created Nepraš playmate calendar or an edible aspic torso created for his anniversary. A number of prominent personalities emerged from Nepraš's studio - for example, the sculptors Paulina Skavova, Martina Hozová and Klára Klose or the sculptor Zdeněk Šmíd and the painter MICL.

In 1992, the Prague City Gallery organized a Gala Evening on the Occasion of Karel Nepraš's Life Anniversary. In 1994 he created the sculpture Dialogue VIII - Lightning Rod as part of the symposium Prostor Zlín. At the turn of 1993–1994, he took part in the renewed International Symposium of Spatial Forms in Ostrava (sculpture Yogi, 1994) and in 1998 at the Symposium of Iron Sculpture in Třinec Ironworks. During the International Ceramic Symposium "Light, Shadow and Porcelain" in Louny in 1996 he met the ceramist Ivan Jelínek, who shared his experience in working with electroporcelain. In 1994–1998 he collaborated on the reconstruction of Prague palaces with architect Pavel Kupka. He won the competition for the monument to Jaroslav Hašek in Žižkov (1995), but did not live to see its realisation and in 2005 the monument was completed by his daughter Karolína Kračková.

Karel Nepraš was intensively devoted to his own work and had more than 30 solo exhibitions between 1991 and 2019. The largest retrospective exhibition of Karel Nepraš's works took place in 2012 at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague. He has been represented in hundreds of group exhibitions at home and abroad (Germany, France, USA, Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Poland, Spain, Indonesia).

Karel Nepraš died in Prague on 5 April 2002, three days after his 70th birthday. President Václav Havel awarded him the Medal of Merit in memoriam in 2002.

Awards (selection) 1962 Silver medal, International Exhibition of Modern Ceramics, Prague 2002 Medal of Merit, 1st Grade (in memoriam)

Work Drawings and prints Nepraš's first humorous drawings were created in 1956 during compulsory lectures on Marxism–Leninism at the Academy, originally as a play and response to drawings by Bedřich Dlouhý, and later to cartoons by Saul Steinberg. The drawings were also source for his later sculptural work.

The drawings of human figures from the late 1950s reflect an absurd, dehumanised and alienated world where horror and terror as well as comedy and humour grow from the same base (Funeral of a Clown, 1957). Some were inspired by reading - illustrations for The Trial by Franz Kafka (1959) or the poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Berenice, 1960), music (The Midnight Tone, 1959) or social atmosphere (Puppet Theatre, Labyrinths of the World, 1956–1961), and gradually evolved into a specific kind of black humour with existential overtones (Little Brutality, 1959). Nepraš himself states that "he recorded cruelty and brutality unconsciously and unintentionally with the aim to show what is not nice about reality, not wanting to moralize". Kafka's The Castle accurately captured the atmosphere of the 1950s and influenced Nepraš's feelings, thinking and philosophy of life for a long time.

In his correspondence, Rudolf Komorous began to use the term strangeness as an aesthetic principle, and the other members of the Šmidra group identified with him.

After a short non-figurative period (1960), Nepraš's subsequent drawings were created in parallel with his sculptural work and preceded the expressive figures and heads with bare bodily structures. Nepraš found inspiration in anatomical illustrations, but did not draw on them directly. He selectively and with metaphorical exaggeration emphasised ears, nasal cavities and dental canals, or tendons, blood vessels and nerves. The drawings reflected absurd plots and gradually reached a greater complexity of meaning (variants of Dialogues, Everything is in a Ball, the catalogue Cycle of Human Misfortunes, 1960s–1980s), in connection with a conference on Franz Kafka in Liblice. In it, Kosík develops the metaphor of modern society as an absurd Great Mechanism in which man finds himself helpless in a network of bureaucratic machinery and in a perpetuated alienated reality. Nepraš's graphic works (Unpleasant Situation, 1969) and sculptures from the second half of the 1960s illustrate this feeling by involving various gears and moving parts. A specific personal testimony to the vicissitudes of life are Nepraš's New Year's cards, which in their radicality strike at the core of reality. By the end of the 1960s, their humour had already been replaced by nausea, loneliness, threat, manipulation, oppression and poisoning reality.

Some cycles of drawings were published in books in the 1960s (Totenklagen, Funeral Songs, 1966) and in the 1980s in South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou or in samizdat (Trigon publishing house). At the end of the 1980s he illustrated Ladislav Klíma's The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch (Paseka, 1990). During the 1990s he made illustrations for new editions of books by Franz Kafka.

In addition to drawings, Karel Nepraš also created numerous prints, mostly using the etching and lithography techniques ('''An Unpleasant Situation, Berenice, Birdie).

Ceramics and porcelain Ceramic figures of humans and animals (Dog Angel as Monument, Dog Mother and Child as Fountain, 1961) or stylized female torsos date from the late 1950s and early 1960s. Nepraš also used ceramics for structural relief, but in the early 1960s he preferred to work with metal. Some smaller ceramic sculptures were made in parallel with other work into the 1980s.

In 1971, at the ceramic symposium in Hradec Králové, Karel Nepraš created a large assemblage of majolica elements, The Great Fountain (South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká collection). From the 1980s comes the series of head-fountains made of stoneware pipes, cast iron and plumbing material. Later, he switched to welded sculptures inspired by F. Kafka (Portrait of Gregor Samsa 1964, variants of Castle, 1963, 1967) with vegetal motifs or literary elements.

In 1964, Karel Nepraš made headpieces out of wires, textiles and red lacquer for a forthcoming puppet ballet based on Edgar Allan Poe and libretto by Jan Koblasa, with music by Rudolf Komorous (The Mask of the Red Death), where the movement of the puppets was to be replaced by variable lighting. The figural type was already fixed in the drawings, but the necessary stylization in the construction of the sculpture also meant a shift in meaning.

Šmidra group had its own mythology with Moroa, the sister of Demona from the novel by Ladislav Klíma, who combines angelic feminine fragility with afterlife horror. In Nepraš's attractive horror conception, his three versions of Moroa (1965–1967) are skinless anatomical monsters, assembled from wires covered with fabric and painted with white, pink or red lacquer.

In the second half of the 1960s Nepraš created a drawing and three sculptural versions of Dialogue (Dialogue, 1965, Dialogue II, 1967) of which The Great Dialogue (1966) became a major work of Czech modern sculpture and is on permanent display at the National Gallery in Prague. Next came a large seven-figure sculpture Family (1967–1969), made of welded metal parts and tubes wrapped in textile and partly using some tools (rakes, pitchforks). At that time Nepraš used only bright red nitrocellulose lacquer to finish the work, which unified the surface.

Nepraš gradually began to incorporate movable elements into his sculptures, at first only as non-functional cranks that did not move anything (Head - Grinder, 1960s), but his version of Dialogue from 1969 to 1970 already contains a horizontal cogged track on which a head moves between two torsos. He also tried to involve the audience (Just keep rotating, 1967). In the 1970s, he created another series of distinctively red-coloured smaller sculptures made of wires and other metal elements, wrapped in textiles (Red Head, 1975, Head, 1977).

Karel Nepraš practised the technique of modelling and casting cast iron at the Spatial forms sculpture symposium in Ostrava in 1969, where he created his key work Family Ready to Leave. Cranks, gears and chains became an integral part of Nepraš's sculptures. He has since used cast iron in its raw form as a basic element of his heads, figures, and assemblages with moving gears (Bigger Rebukes Smaller 1969–1970) created through the mid-1970s.

The increasing political oppression after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia also inspired two cast-iron sculptures conceived as presses: Figures with Filling I and II (1969–1970) or red cast-iron sculptures of figures joined tightly together (Crowd, 1969-1970). The reinforcements and ribs of the cast-iron casts have their antecedents in Nepraš's drawings.

Figures assembled from mechanisms and technical components are automata in which only their anthropometry is related to humans. But one can find in them a subtle humour in the details, and an absurd humour in the possible but meaningless applicability. Nepraš's humour attacks the intellect and releases tension. At the same time, the sculptor's conception of man as a mechanism without individuality is weakened by the artistic means used. The contrast between the drastic motif and its artistic travesty is strongly appealing. It excludes the tragedy and pathos of extreme situations and, as a bitter comedy, is closer to reality, which also mixes different genres. It finds its starting point in self-reflection and critical reckoning, which includes a methodical disregard for the self.

Metal sculptures and assemblages (1970s–1990s) The sculptor later increasingly used prefabricated cast iron elements, pipes, screws, wheels and plumbing fittings to assemble objects (Figural Sculpture with Screw, 1972, National Gallery in Prague, An Attempt at Self-Portrait) or combines cast iron casts with tools (variations on the theme Harvest, 1993/94), with stoneware, plumbing fittings and various banal objects such as Head-fountains or Portraits. In the late 1980s, Nepraš returned to the beginnings of his sculptural work, but the materials he used and the technique of joining them had changed. In addition to pipes, which only pretend to be functional, he used other plumbing materials and fittings. For his exhibition in the unofficial gallery at Opatov, he created a set of relief portraits in which, by carefully selecting the materials used, he attempted to characterize a few selected people from his surroundings (Portrait of S.S, 1989). At the same time, he assembles individual sculptures into new contexts of meaning (variants of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1988–1991), or creates conceptual environments (The Lament Wall, 1990, Bath for MV). In 1990, he participated in the International Sculpture Symposium at Lemberk Castle and created a spatial installation made of pipes and cast iron tubes resembling a giant animal skeleton.

Electroporcelain and stoneware The ceramic object Dialogue VIII - lightning rod was created during the symposium Prostor Zlín in 1994. Since the mid-1990s, when Nepraš participated in the international ceramic symposium Light, Shadow and Porcelain in Louny, he has been working on a series of sculptures made of porcelain and stoneware. He learned to work with electroporcelain, which he used in smaller relief sculptures (Drying Landscape, 1995, Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs IV, 1995, Manifestation at Temelín, 1995–1996, Thurn-Taxis Ditch, 1995).

In the 1990s, a series of busts was created as assemblages on a porcelain body in the shape of an inverted urinal or washbasin (Porcelain Bust I, 1996, Porcelain Bust II, 1998). After figurative objects-assemblages (Breasts in a Different Way, 1996–1997, Sitting, 1999), he created original variations parodying sanitary ware (the Tender Toilet Bowls series, 1999). His work was playful and spontaneous, and his humour, sometimes bordering on the unbearable, was a serious and cruelly truthful statement.

Realizations in public space In 1962 Karel Nepraš participated in a commission for the Church of St. Peter and Paul in Jedovnice, for which he designed the railings for the choir with the organ.

Karel Nepraš has mastered the technique of modelling and casting in cast iron at the 1969 Sculpture Symposium of Spatial Forms in Ostrava, where he created his principal work Family Ready to Leave (1969) (uninstalled in 1974 and destroyed in the 1980s). The reconstructed sculptural group, created in 2011-2015 according to preserved Nepraš's designs, is exhibited permanently in Centre of Contemporary Art DOX, Prague.

In the early 1970s, he also took interest in the design of a modern fountain for the castle park in Litomyšl. In the 1970s, Nepraš was forced to make a living as restorer for existential reasons. Thanks to the architect Pavel Kupka, he was at least able to create some realizations in architecture, for example on the facade of the Mourning Hall in Svitavy (1973).

Karel Nepraš also used cast iron elements and steel in larger objects for public space (Cameraman, 1988, Bower and Springhouse, 1989, Home for the elderly in Malešice). After the revival of the Ostrava Symposium, Nepraš created the sculpture Yogi in 1993, which was installed in the Milada Horáková orchard in Ostrava. In 1993–1994 he started collaboration with the Regional Gallery in Zlín and during symposium Prostor Zlín (Space Zlín) has created large sculpture group Dialogue VIII - Lighting conductor, which is installed since 1994 in front of Alternative - Culture Institute Zlín.

In front of the Tuscany Palace at Hradčany Nepraš's stone columns are made in Baroque proportions of stylized busts of ladies wearing a neckcloth, thus forming the counterpart of the male guards of Prague Castle. Nepraš's work is not only an accompanying decoration, but co-determines significantly the character of the place and brings the spirit of the present into Baroque palaces.

Nepraš's latest realization for public space is the Monument to Jaroslav Hašek, which contains a merger of two classical ideas - an equestrian statue and a Herm. In the case of the monument, where the necessity of a realistic portrayal of the face could not be circumvented, Nepraš solved the need for free expression with a minor spitefulness in the style of his drawings and perched the bust of the writer on a plinth that runs through the body of the horse. The stylized sculpture of the horse was refreshed by a counter with beer trays and an unobtrusive quotation of his earlier sculptures composed of plumbing materials. Originally, the monument was to include a functional beer tap. The sculptor did not live to see the completion of the monument and therefore the bust of Jaroslav Hašek and the horse's legs was created by the sculptor's daughter Karolína Neprašová in 2005.

In 2008, another cast of the horse statue from the Jaroslav Hašek monument was placed in the reconstructed Nostic Palace (Ministry of Culture). The horse passes through the wall and while its rear part is located in the former stables, the head of the horse is visible in the dominant view from the palace courtyard. Cameraman, Barrandov, Prague (1989) Bower and Springhouse, Prague-Malešice (1989) Figural Columns (27 executed nobles of Bohemia), Liechtenstein Palace, Prague (1988–1993) Yogi, Ostrava (1993) Dialogue VIII - Lighting conductor, Zlín (1994) Stylized figural columns, Fireplace, Tuscany Palace, Prague (1994–1998) Communication, OSJEP Brno (1999) Monument of Jaroslav Hašek, Prokopovo square, Prague-Žižkov (1995–2005) Horse statue, Nostic Palace (Ministry of Culture) Permanent exposition of sculptures in front of the Trade Palace, National Gallery Prague (before 2020)

Realizations in architecture

Publications Totenklagen / Funeral songs / Cants funèbres, Artia, enterprise for foreign trade, Prague 1966 Puppenbusen (Satirische Zeichnungen), Heinrich Heine Verlag GMBH, Frankfurt 1969

Representation in collections National Gallery Prague Moravian Gallery in Brno Museum Kampa, Foundation of Jan and Meda Mládek National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris Museum Bochum Museum of Art, Łódź Aleš South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region (GASK) in Kutná Hora (formerly Czech Museum of Fine Arts, Prague) Benedikt Rejt Gallery, Louny Prague City Gallery Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové Gallery of Fine Arts in Cheb Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava Museum of Art Olomouc Regional Gallery in Liberec Museum of Art and Design Benešov private collections at home and abroad

Exhibitions Author's (selection) 1960 Labyrinth of the World, cartoons, Rokoko theatre, Prague 1963 Puppet theatre, cartoons, Paravan theatre, Prague 1964 Sculptures, drawings, prints, Gallery at Charles Square, Prague 1969 Sculptures, Studium Generale, Stuttgart 1970 Račte točit / Just keep rotating, Václav Špála Gallery, Prague 1978 Karel Nepraš: Zeichnungen, plastiken, Sonnenring Galerie, Münster 1989 Karel Nepraš, Opatov Gallery, Prague 1991 Kresby, grafika, ilustrace, kreslený humor a drobná plastika / Drawings, prints, illustrations, cartoons, small sculptures, National Gallery Prague 1991 Sculptures, Old Town Hall, Prague 1992/94 Sochy / Sculptures, Regional galleries in Karlovy Vary, Olomouc, Ostrava 1999 Nalakuj si sám / Paint it yourself, Gambit Gallery, Prague 1999 Iron Story, Peron Gallery, Prague 2000 Karel Nepraš, Centre tchèque Paris 2000 Karel Nepraš 1960 - 2000, Egon Schiele Art Centrum, Český Krumlov 2002 Karel Nepraš, Benedikt Rejt Gallery, Louny 2002 Sedící, stojící, kráčející / Sitting, standing, walking, Queen Anne's Summer Palace (Belvedere), Prague 2007 Karel Nepraš, House of Art, Zlín 2008 Karel Nepraš: Česká krajina / Czech landscape, Gallery of modern art in Hradec Králové 2012 Karel Nepraš, DOX, Centrum současného umění / Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague 2016 Karel Nepraš: Family ready to leave, DOX, Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague 2019 Karel Nepraš: Egypt—Giacometti—Nepraš, Museum of Art and Design, Benešov

Collective (selection from over 300) 1954 1. Malmuzherciáda, Klub unitářů, Prague 1957 Výstava na jeden den / Exhibition for single day, Střelecký ostrov, Prague 1964 Výstava / Exhibition D, Nová síň Gallery, Prague 1964 Socha / Sculpture 1964, Liberec 1965 Šmidras, Letohrádek Ostrov 1965 Junge tschechische graphiker, 1. Teil, Alpbach 1965 Jeune Avant-garde Tchécoslovque, Galerie Lambert, Paris 1966 Tschechoslowakische Kunst der Gegenwart, Akademie der Künste, Berlín 1967 Mostra d'arte contemporanea Cecoslovacca, Castello del Valentino, Turin 1967 Fantasijní aspekty současného českého umění / Fantasy Aspects of Contemporary Czech Art, Regional Gallery of Highlans, Jihlava, Václav Špála Gallery, Prague 1967 17 tsjechische kunstenaars, Galerie Orez, The Hague 1968 Die Logik der durchsichtigen Nacht, Kunstamt Wilmersdorf, Berlín 1968 Šmidrové / Šmidras, Václav Špála Gallery, Prague, Regional Gallery, Hradec Králové 1969 22 grafici della Cecoslovacchia, Libreria Feltrinelli, Florence 1969 Sept jeunes peintres tchécoslovaques, Galerie Lambert, Paris 1969 Arte contemporanea in Cecoslovacchia, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GNAM), Rome 1969 Nová figurace / New Figuration, Mánes, Prague 1969 Socha a město / Sculpture and Town, Liberec 1970 Tschechische Skulptur des 20. Jahrhunderts: Von Myslbek bis zur Gegenwart, Schloß Charlottenburg - Orangerie, Berlin 1970 Artchemo, Václav Špála Gallery, Prague 1970 Karel Nepraš, Naděžda Plíšková, Malinův dům, Havlíčkův Brod 1980/81 Eleven Contemporary Artists from Prague, New York University, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1981 Netvořice '81, House of Bedřich Dlouhý, Netvořice 1985 Karel Nepraš, Jan Steklík: Žena ve výtvarném umění / Woman in Art, ÚMCH, Prague 1985 Barevná socha / Colourful sculpture, Gallery H, Kostelec nad Černými lesy 1987 Expressiv. Mitteleuropäische Kunst seit 1960, Vienna 1987 Grotesknost v českém výtvarném umění 20. století / Grotesqueness in 20th Century Czech Art, Old Town Hall, Prague 1988 Expressiv, Central European Art since 1960, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. 1988 Jan and Meda Mladek Collection, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, New York 1989 Úsměv, vtip a škleb / Smile, Joke and Grin, Palace of Culture, Prague 1990 Pocta umělců Jindřichovi Chalupeckému / Artists' Tribute to Jindřich Chalupecký, Prague City Gallery 1990 Neoficiální. Umění Československa 1968-1989 / Unofficial. Art of Czechoslovakia 1968-1989, Moravian Gallery in Brno, Regensburg 1990 Polymorphie: Kunst als subversives Element Tschechoslowakei 1939-1990, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin 1990 Czech Art in the Velvet Revolution, New York City 1991 Tradition und Avantgarde in Prag, Osnabrück, Bonn 1991 K.Š. Křižovnická škola čistého humoru bez vtipu / K.Š. Crusader school of pure humour without jokes, Prague, Hradec Králové, Olomouc 1993 Šmidrové - Škola české grotesky - 12/15 / Šmidras - School of Czech Grotesque - 12/15, Gambit Gallery, Prague 1993 /94 Mezinárodní sympozium prostorových forem / International Symposium of Spatial Forms, Ostrava 1993/94 Nová figurace / New Figuration, Litoměřice, Pardubice, Brno, Opava, Jihlava 1994 Ohniska znovuzrození: České umění 1956-1963 / Focal Points of Rebirth: Czech Art 1956-1963, Prague City Gallery 1996 Umění zastaveného času / The Art when Time Stood Still, Prague, Brno, Cheb 1997 Česká groteska / Czech Grotesque, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, Bratislava, Košice, Warsaw 1999 Sympozium železné plastiky 1998 / Symposium of Iron Sculpture 1998, National Gallery Prague, House of Art, Brno 1999 Umění zrychleného času. Česká výtvarná scéna 1958 - 1968 / The art of accelerated time. Czech art scene 1958–1968, Prague, Cheb 2000 100 + 1 uměleckých děl z dvacátého století, House of the Black Madonna, National Gallery Prague 2001 Barevná socha / Colourful sculpture, North Bohemian Gallery in Litoměřice 2004/6 Šedesátá / The sixties, Zlatá husa Gallery, Prague, House of Art Brno, Gallery of Art, Karlovy Vary 2004 Kupka - Nepraš: Setkání v architektuře / Kupka - Nepraš: Encounters in Architecture, Jaroslav Fragner Gallery, Prague 2005 Šmidrové: Jednou Šmidrou, Šmidrou na věky / Šmidras: Once a Šmidra, always a Šmidra, Bítov Castle, Šternberk Gallery, Atrium, Prague 2007 Karel Nepraš a přátelé / Karel Nepraš and friends, Alternativa, Zlín 2007 Soustředěný pohled. Grafika 60. let ze sbírek členských galerií Rady galerií České republiky / Focused view. Prints of the 1960s from the collections of the member galleries of the Council of Galleries of the Czech Republic, Regional Gallery Liberec, Regional Gallery of Highlands Jihlava 2008 České a slovenské umění 60. let 20. století / Czech and Slovak Art of the 1960s, House of Art, Zlín, Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava 2009 Kupka - Nepraš: Setkání v architektuře / / Kupka - Nepraš: Encounters in Architecture, Nostic Palace, Prague 2010 New Sensitivity, National Art Museum of China, Beijing 2010 Roky ve dnech. České umění 1945-1957 / Years in days. Czech Art 1945-1957, Prague City Gallery 2013 Křižovnická škola čistého humoru bez vtipu / Crusader school of pure humour without jokes, Brno Gallery CZ 2015 Einfach phantastisch!, Barockschloss Riegersburg 2016 Šmidrové / Šmidras, Museum Kampa - Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation, Prague 2016 Křižovnická škola čistého humoru bez vtipu, Gallery of Modern Art, Roudnice nad Labem 2018 Jaro. Československá výtvarná scéna 1966–1968 / Spring. Czechoslovak art scene 1966–1968, Gallery of Modern Art, Roudnice nad Labem 2018 Anatomie skoku do prázdna: Rok 1968 a výtvarné umění v Československu / The Anatomy of a Leap into the Void: The Year 1968 and Art in Czechoslovakia, Exhibition Hall Masné krámy, Plzeň 2019 MEDA: Ambasadorka umění / MEDA: Ambassador of Art, Museum Kampa – Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation, Prague 2020 Odvrácená tvář humoru: Groteska, nadsázka an ironie v českém umění 2. poloviny 20. století ze sbírek GMU / The Reverse Face of Humour: Grotesque, Exaggeration and Irony in Czech Art of the Second Half of the 20th Century from the Collections of GMU, Gallery of Modern Art, Roudnice nad Labem 2024 Zámek na zámku: Inspirace románem Franze Kafky Zámek ve výtvarném umění / The Castle at the Castle: Inspiration from Franz Kafka's novel The Castle in Fine Art, Klenová Castle