Vladislav
Kavan
Kavan is a born storyteller. There is his Eastern soul in his work, which he draws and paints poetry. Mythical creatures, good-natured human lions, pierrots, forest kings and princesses appear in apparent freedom and sensual cheerfulness. In some ways, one is reminded of Chagall, who brought this magic of Eastern poetry into the Central European pictorial world in the 1920s.
Biography
The artist Vladislav Kavan was born in Baska/Silesia in Czechoslovakia in 1942. Kavan's father worked as a machine operator in a factory of the Witkowitz ironworks. The young Vladislav began his school career in the interwar period. It was only after 1945 that he was offered the prospect of an academic education. He moved to Prague, where he attended the State School of Graphic Arts in 1945/46 and thus acquired the prerequisites for further studies. The following year, he began studying at the Department of Textile Design at the Academy of Arts and Crafts in Prague, which had been upgraded to academic status. Due to the progressing totalitarian penetration of the country, Kavan travelled to Italy with his family on 28 August 1968 and, after a stopover in Trento and Neumarkt near Bolzano, ended up living there until his death. He became a valuable representative of our culture and managed to overcome borders with his power of expression and representation.
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