Although Czech scenographer and painter Jaroslav Malina (1937–2016) lived in turbulent times, he won international respect for his work. Spanning Malina’s entire life—from his early years in the Nazi protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, through four decades under communism and the period after the Velvet Revolution returned the Czech state to democracy—the essays and interviews in this volume examine the depth and breadth of his accomplishments.

Essays by scholars from the Czech Republic, United Kingdom, and the United States clarify and illuminate Malina’s contributions to art both in Central Europe and across the world. Exploring multiple aspects of Malina’s career, they shed light on his roots in modernism, which characterized the years of the First Republic (1918–38), through the advent of postmodernism, contextualizing his accomplishments in a variety of media while adding insights about his methods and their philosophical underpinnings. Appearing in print for the first time, interview transcripts provide an intimate view of the impulses that guided Malina over the course of his career.

Also featuring over one hundred and fifty color images that illustrate the connections between Malina’s public scenographic work and his more personal paintings, this book reveals Malina as an artist who continued to work during difficult and changing times without ever losing a very human approach to life.