Jakub Matuška aka Masker

Jakub Matuška aka Masker (1981), a graduate of Vladimír Skrepl’s Painting Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and a former prominent personality of the graffiti scene under the name Masker, has over the past few years developed into a confident mature painter whose sophisticated and characteristically distorted drawing handwriting deals primarily with the theme of man and the effect of his energy on the surrounding world. His paintings often hide deep thoughts related to both the personal life of the individual and to socie- tal conflicts under the cloak of the grotesque. Everyday events take on a mythical form under the author’s hand. Seemingly simple-looking scenes often contain complex inter- weaving of shapes that can turn the initially revealed meaning into its opposite. The small sketches that the artist makes based on his ideas become the starting point for future paintings. They are enlarged many times without losing their original energy and atmo- sphere. Matuška’s work is based on a unique technique combining the spontaneity of pen drawing, digital preparation on an iPad screen and the freedom of painting itself. He successfully combines his predilection for digital art with the painting tradition of the old masters of the Gothic and Renaissance periods and representatives of the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century. Jakub Matuška was a finalist for the Jindřich Cha- lupecký Award in 2010, and a year later he won the 333 Art Award of the National Gallery in Prague. Today, he has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad, and is represented in a number of private collections.