Naděžda Plíšková

Naděžda Plíšková (6 November 1934 in Rozdělov u Kladna – 16 September 1999 in Prague) was a Czech printmaker, painter, ceramist, author of sculptural objects and poet.

Life Naděžda Plíšková studied graphic art at the Higher School of Arts and Crafts in Prague (1950-1954, prof. Jaroslav Vodrážka) and in 1954-1958 she studied graphic art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (prof. Vladimír Silovský). In 1958-1959 she took a scholarship at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (prof. Gerhard Kurt Miller), which she completed with a series of woodcuts for books by Karel Čapek. She was then accepted to study painting in the studio of Prof. Karel Souček at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she spent two more honorary years after graduation (1961) and passed the state exam (Prof. Jiří Kotalík).

In addition to printmaking, she worked on ceramics, wrote poetry and socialised with artists and theoreticians from the Křižovnická School. In 1964 she married the sculptor and printmaker Karel Nepraš. Their daughter Karolína Neprašová-Kračková is also an artist.

In 1968-1969 she completed a scholarship in Stuttgart and had an exhibition there with Jiří Balcar. Plíšková has returned to Czechoslovakia occupied by the Warsaw Pact troops. She was offered another scholarship by the Ford Foundation in November 1969, but was not allowed to go to the United States. After the birth of her daughter (1975) and with limited opportunity to exhibit, she devoted herself mainly to ex libris and writing poetry for samizdat editions. During normalisation she had only a few exhibitions in small unofficial galleries.

In 1982 she suffered a serious spinal cord injury, underwent surgery and a long convalescence. After returning from the hospital, in the suffocating atmosphere of the Husák normalization, she almost resigned to her own work. In 1983, she wrote to Jindřich Chalupecký: "If you only knew how hard it is to get used to the fact that nobody counts on you anymore, and to watch averages, diligent averages, exhibiting, scheming and going merrily on".

Plíšková has been a member of the Association of Czech Graphic Artists Hollar since 1969. After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, she was a founding member of the free association Tolerance, but her artistic and literary work is clearly marked by her unhappy personal fate until the late 1990s. She died in Prague on 16 September 1999.

Work Literary work and illustrations She published her poems and prose from the late 1950s and then especially in the 1970s in samizdat publications - Czech Expedition, Spektrum, Vokno, Revolver Revue, Lidové noviny, etc. The poetry collection Thirteen Poems (1982) was also published in samizdat. She is listed in the Toronto Dictionary of Czech Writers (1982).

Some of these texts are included in the collection Plíšková by alphabet (1991). Poems and prose stylised as overheard monologues and restaurant speeches make up the book Pub Romanticism (1998). The poems collected in the volume Plíšková to Herself (2000) are mostly reflections on personal relationships, from motherhood and friends' parties to an increasingly strong perception of the loss of love, cruel loneliness, and reflections on the end of life. The posthumously published book contains works from 1997 to 1999, some texts not included in other publications and, in the editorial notes, a transcription of letters to Jindřich Chalupecký.

A commentary on some of the author's life milestones is her interview with Andrej Stankovič in Revolver Revue No. 47 of 2001, which was published posthumously at her request.

Quote Naděžda Plíšková: S U N should shine more at night, there is enough light in the day-time anyway