ABOUT AUTHOR
In 1954, in the city of České Budějovice, Jiří Skořepa was born with two prominent talents – for arts, and for music. He started building his relationship with art from a very young age, led by his father who was an Arts teacher and in his free time practised painting and photography. His father watched Jiří’s first serious attempts with art as Jiří prepared for studying Arts. Having successfully completed the entrance talent exams, he was accepted to the Secondary School of Graphics in Prague. During his years there, he studied mainly figure and portrait drawing and painting. At the same time, he became immersed in vocal music. Jiří took up private singing classes as he started to prepare for exams to the Prague Conservatoire. His invitation to study Opera at the Conservatoire effectively decided what his main future profession would be. In the years that followed, Jiří spent time engaged with various opera theatres as well as performing at concert stages both in the Czech Republic and abroad.
Still, he spent most of his free time painting. His focus on figure and portrait was extended significantly by embracing landscapes, which became his core theme for the coming years. Except for his beloved landscapes of the Southern Bohemia, Jiří also added the landscapes of the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands, vastly favoured by painters, and various motifs from his travels abroad. Jiří’s work is directly linked to the tradition of Czech landscape painters, in particular the school of Otakar Nejedlý. Using a vigorous and bold painting style, he seeks to emphasise the true essence of each motif instead of a mere photographic description, therefore one of his favourite painting styles is alla prima. Jiří’s paintings are always a personal testimony and an emotional expression of his connection to the motif, while aspiring to remain open to the new – whether it’s technique or form. Except for landscapes, Jiří nowadays paints city and town sceneries, as well as figures and portraits. Over the last forty years, Jiří Skořepa has had exhibitions numerously in Prague, České Budějovice, Brno, Pilsen and other towns and cities across Bohemia and Moravia. He has also had exhibitions repeatedly at various places across the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands where there is a longstanding tradition of popular summer exhibitions of the works of landscape painters. Exhibitions of Jiří’s work abroad have taken place most often in Germany, Austria, Sweden and the USA. He has also taken part regularly in exhibitions in Japan. Today, you can find Jiří Skořepa’s paintings in a number of galleries and private collections both in the Czech Republic and in the rest of the world.
