Who or what is Jaroslav Róna?

Jaroslav Róna is an artist. He is a sculptor as well as actor and author. He was born on 27th April 1957 in Prague in a Czech - Jewish family. His upbringing was strictly secular. His father worked in energetics for all his life and when he got old he became a writer. His mother was a clerk all her life and when she got old, she became retired. His sister is a stylist. He does not remember much of his childhood; he probably was not much interested. He was developing in the dark normalization era of the seventieths. As a fifteen-year-old (1972), after he was not accepted to the School of arts, he left home to work in a factory in Vysočina (Highlands), where he underwent a grim fate of a wage labourer. However he used to read and go to the film club with a great passion.

After he was "enlightened" during the projection of a Polish film "Illumination" (1975) he decided for the career of an art designer at any cost. Nevertheless he started painting while he was studying at the apprentice centre in Hlinsko, Bohemia, where he bought oil colours for his first wages. Among his first paintings was a portrait of John Lennon on a piece of a cartoon. After finishing this centre he tried to apply for the School of arts.

At the age of eighteen (1975) he was accepted to the Secondary school of arts in Hollar Square in Prague, where there was very liberal atmosphere at that time. Since that time he has not been dealing with anything else but art design, literature, and films and hanging around his favourite café - Slávie. Like in any other areas of that sad time, he was mostly influenced by German, Norwegian, and Dutch impressionism namely James Ensor, Alfred Kubin, Edward Munch, Kathe Kolwitz, Ernst Barlach, Otto Dixe, George Grosz, Oskar Kokoschka, Emilio Verhaeren, Max Beckmann, Egon Schiele, and early works of Pablo Picasso.

After he passed his final exam from Russian with a great difficulty (he was only able to copy the test from his fellow students), he applied for Arts and Crafts College, majoring in Glass design - that connected both painting and sculpture - and he was accepted! One of his teachers was legendary, known also abroad, sculptor and glass designer, charismatic Stanislav Libenský. In Jaroslav Róna's own words, (at that time!) he went through the same development as that of a Neanderthaler who would apply for a NASA program to fly on the Moon and was accepted. During his studies, the principal of the College suggested his expulsion form the school for the cycle of structural paintings "Lands of pork viscera" as well as for throwing a communist student - who was bringing them application forms to the Communist Party - down the stairs together with his fellow student Zdeněk Lhotský.

Fortunately all ended up well thanks to kindly professor Libenský, who settled everything. In 1981 he started painting series of bizarre, grotesque paintings, later labelled as "Czech grotesque". He finished school in 1984 with his diploma work Big and Small Dog - couple of large glass animal sculptures in a metal construction. You can find them in the Prague's National Museum and HI Gallery Collections.

After finishing the college, Professor Libenský took him to the USA as his assistant. Free cosmopolitan atmosphere of a summer school in the Northwest coastal Pilchuck (near Seattle) enchanted him and made him relaxed. After a short hesitation - he was thinking of emigrating - he eventually came back to Prague, that he is not able to live without, and where the authorities took his passport away from him. At that period he mostly worked on paintings (only seldom sculptures) and after bitterly ironising grotesque pictures he switched over to typical dark chiaroscural visions of whatever, however mainly prehistorical animals and ruins that are falling apart. He and his friend Tomáš Vorel also wrote a play "Little monkey" for the drama group "Mimosa" that is a member of the Prague cult five. He, finally, after a row with Vorel directed the play. The play was performed for several years in Braník Theatre of Pantomime where it was sold out all the time thanks to rural visitors who made trips to see it. Róna would get humble fees for the play but they enabled him to paint.

In 1987 his studio burnt out misfortunately. In the last minute he got out whole in flames and saved his life. In the same year he co-founded the legendary art group The Stubborn that had an exhibition in Lidový dům in Prague 9 (the officer in charge for culture favoured these artists) shortly after. The exhibition became a cultural event no 1. The group immediately became an eyesore to official ruling Union of artists. In mild perestroika releasing of political conditions (September 1987) Róna left for a journey along Italian art jewels (and also to collect a debt) from where he hastily returned to jump right onto fluffy velvet of revolution. On November 17th he took part in the demonstration in Národní třída where his wife to become was hit with a truncheon running through one of the streets. Luckily this did not leave any after effects. During the revolution he was involved in a promotion centre in Mánes where he draw revolution leaflets that went right from his hand to arouse people from all the parts of the republic!

After a short revolutionary intermezzo he again started with painting and sculpturing which is eventually what he can do best (this is the opinion of some others as well). In 1991 his daughter Valerie is born. The baby seems to be alive and kicking! In the same year he is working on a scene design for the film America based on F. Kafka's book The Missing. For this work ho got a nomination for Český lev (Czech lion) a prestigious film award. He did not get the prize but it went to the director of the film Jan Švankmajer to whom we congratulate here!

Róna tries to catch up with everything he did not make to do during the Communism. He travels to Mexico, Israel, France, Indonesia, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Scotland, India and Canary Islands. When he got back, his wife forsook him (understandably) and he stayed alone again like before he met her (it was in 1996). Shortly after he got divorced.

As usual he works to suppress the sorrow. He began with modelling and during this period painting literally fell behind. Several monumental sculptures is made that are "settled" in Prague Castle (e.g. Parable with scull), in Klenová Chateau (Knight and dragon, Sepia), Prague Southern Town (Oscar), Agios Nikolaos on Crete (Labyrinth) and Moravian Mikulov (Sarcophagus, Seafarers).

Since then his work is like a pendulum that in regular rhythm leans towards painting and then sculpturing again. Of course he also has exhibitions regularly and you can see the list of his domestic and foreign exhibitions in his catalogue. The most important exhibition so far took place on turn of 1997-98 in The Stone Bell House in Prague in the Old Town Square. This was the opportunity to issue one and only (so far) representative catalogue with up to now profile of his works. (You can get it in specialized bookshops.) Some samples are also in the National Gallery, Gallery of Capital City of Prague, Umprum (art school) Museum and Handcrafts Museum.

Nonetheless he re-establishes a comic group "Tros Sketos" with his old friends František Skála and Aleš Najbrt and they perform regularly in Famous Theatre Sklep in Dobeška and they even work out a jingle at the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary.

In 2002 the group made a journey to the USA where they entertained the fellow countrymen in Washington and New York.

In 2000 Róna is invited to prestigious competition for Franz Kafka Memorial by the F. Kafka Society. He wins the competition and in 2003 the memorial is dedicated in the Old Town of Prague.

In 2005 he creates Little Martian Statue to Hadovka park, Prague 6.
The same year he is also accepted to Fine Arts Academy in Prague as the head pedagogue of sculptue.

In 2007 he creates David and Goliath sculpture in gothic "Špalíček" in Cheb, where he had vast exhibition of sculpture and painting previous year.

In 2008 he is working on creation of Mythical Ship statue for Bratislava River Park area on Dunaj bank. He is also working on Lamp – statue for Liberec.

That is all.

Thank you for your attention and see you soon.

Yours Jaroslav Róna