BIO
Art is a gateway to higher goals.
Zuzana Čížková 1982 (shortened biography)
International contemporary painter, sculptor, illustrator, mother, daughter, teacher, lover of coffee and hemp medicine, admirer of nature with a tick phobia, collector of fine art, stones, fossils, and Kinder Egg toys, passionate provocateur, feminist who loves men, a woman who behaved like a boy in her girlhood, eternal dreamer, and unyielding person.
Zuzana Čížková is a Czech sculptor and painter, focusing mainly on themes of communication and the symbiosis between humans and nature. She comes from the twin towns of Brandýs nad Labem-Stará Boleslav, where she lived until around 1999. Until 2011, she was constantly traveling like a snail with her home on her back. She settled in Dobřichovice and gradually moved her studio there, which she had in Prague's Košíře until 2022.
Currently, she works in both painting and sculpture in various formats – from small, intimate sculptures, most often in bronze but also in other sculptural materials, to larger sculptures up to gardens and parks. Currently, after twenty years, she is also returning to lithography, graphics, and other older paper techniques. In 2025 and 2026, she will once again exhibit more intensively abroad, for example at Art Expo New York 2026 and the Contemporary Art Fair, and she is dedicating herself to larger sculptural works for outdoor settings, continuing a sculptural project that develops her painting cycle Nejsme roboti. In 2024, besides many other professional activities, such as several group exhibitions and two solo exhibitions in her new place of residence, she is focusing intensely on completing a sculptural ensemble for the Starý Prosek Park in Prague 9. However, it is not made of stone but from her cement mix designed for outdoor sculptures, which was designed and calculated for her in 2004 by the Research Institute of Mortars in Radotín. The official unveiling of the sculptures took place on September 28, 2024. The Madonino's Secret ensemble contains a subtle connection between diverse cultural worlds as well as personalities. Each of the five sculptures of Madonino's Secret hides a story One being, whose story can unfold differently, yet all five are connected by many common themes, life challenges, and responsibilities. The number five is five—it represents the connection of human nature with nature, and it signifies love in both its spiritual and physical forms. Furthermore, according to numerology, it primarily symbolizes determination, strong will, but also freedom in decision-making. It is a sign of goodness and protection, which women symbolize sufficiently, at least at certain stages of their lives.
2019–2022 She participated in collective international exhibitions, which were not stopped even by strict COVID measures. For example, in Žilina at the Groma gallery: Significant works of contemporary Slovak and Czech art. She created a children's book called Svinka řádí. Its story took place in her garden and the nearby surroundings of the Dobřichovice castle, and the main heroes are terrestrial crustaceans, little pigs, popular friends from Zuzana's youth, but also her son's. Jana Laňková wrote the book based on her idea. Since the publisher did not cover any expenses related to printing, she asked Zuzana asked for support from a prominent Dobřichovice figure and the town hall, which financially backed the printing of the book, so that the stories for children could be published.
In 2018, Zuzana created the most beautiful sculpture, that is, her own child. Although she dedicated herself to the joys of parenthood, she didn’t stop creating or exhibiting in the Czech Republic and abroad. She left her studio in Prague’s Košíře and started building a new one in Dobřichovice to better balance caring for her child with her work. And as fate probably intended, she began to create and live in the region where her grandfather Čížek, a restorer, had lived and worked. A new series of paintings called Horizon of Events emerged. Zuzana likes to say that her tiny preschool child even helped with some of them, which is why many paintings from this series are not for sale. This gave rise to a series of dynamic paintings with vibrant color transitions, into which not only Zuzana put her newly fueled energy and joy of life.
In 2017, she intensely painted canvases based on her drawings Trips N and sketches. During this period, the artist's paintings came to the forefront.
which allowed her to let her imagination run more freely, and conversely, allowed her not to worry about technical issues. After years, director Hana Pinkavová returns and shoots an episode with Zuzana for the new series 'Am I Still Burning?' Zuzana Čížková, a stone sculptor and painter. She started attending the catechumenate in Prague's Karlov, and got baptized with Klára. She consulted her work from the series 'We Are Not Robots' with deacon Jiří Ignác Laňka, which she elevated by adding another experience with her body and spirit, and especially the effects of civilized life on the physical and mental health of each of us. As fate, or God, would have it, in 2016 she collapsed so severely that she almost had to relearn how to walk. This was the less serious but noticeable health limitation. After several months, she at least began drawing from her bed, resulting in a limited edition of drawings called 'Trips N.' She paints canvases based on her 'Trips N' drawings and sketches. During this time, paintings became more prominent in her work, while sculpture took a back seat.
From 2011 to 2016, she spent more and more time at the opposite end from Prague. In her paintings, motifs of the Elbe River and Proboštské Lake gradually disappeared, making way for the Berounka River. She still had her studio in Prague's Košíře, but she was increasingly spending time in the Berounka region. The aftereffects of the global economic crisis were still noticeable, so Zuzana made use of her teaching background and began teaching art there part-time. She had the idea to take her favorite theme of sign language a step further and invited deaf students from Holečkova School and her hearing students to create diptychs together, meaning pairs of canvases. Each pair of hearing and deaf students had to communicate and paint a picture together. The results exceeded all expectations. One of these workshops, titled 'Beautiful Speech,' was filmed by Czech Television in the episode TKN (link to CT i-Vysílání on the website Natočili o autorce).
In 2014, together with the Klatovy Klenová Gallery, she organized a major solo exhibition at the Church of St. Lawrence, including a performance during the opening, whose message was that every Abrahamic religion...Religion has a similar moral code, and that even the believers themselves don’t differ much from each other in the basic aspects. Among the performers was musician Eduard Parma. Some of her works at the exhibition also addressed this topic. Many media outlets, including the tabloid Blesk, wrote about the unusual opening and exhibition, twisting the information, and during the stone sculpture symposium in Switzerland, which she attended the day after the exhibition opened, she had to deal remotely with unpleasant attacks directed at her as well as at all the performers and co-organizers of the event. She created two sculptures for the town of Poděbrady: Saint Agnes, which was made according to the assignment, and a sculpture of Ludvík Kuba, where Zuzana had free rein, though the theme was still given. This contrasts with her other sculptural works, which are her own original creations, such as Rano Rara Ku in Hořice, Saint Florian in Podhorní Újezd, Praryba in Spálené Poříčí, Water Spirits Claiming Their Rights in Lanškroun, Milenka in Brandýs nad Labem, Kel in Ostrava, Sign Language Inscription in Prague 5, Madonino’s Secret in Prague 9, and in Poděbrady. These were classic sculptural commissions. In painting, she mostly focused on the series Romantic Landscape of the 21st Century, where, especially through roads and highways, she captured many places she might have just passed by in a car. From seventeen to almost thirty, she was often on the move like a 'speed snail' with a house on her back.
From 2006 to 2010, she lived alternately in short-term sublets with her colleagues in various places in Prague and didn't return to France because of her father's serious illness. She began to focus more intensively on painting, leading to many new works in the Romantic Landscape of the 21st Century series, which look like postcards from many of the author's travels, and she continued with the Birth series. At the same time, she felt physically and mentally exhausted. She was interested in how narrow the boundaries are between a human being living in modern times and a robot, and she also returned to an earlier series called We Are Not Robots.
In 2010, Zuzana, as the only one among diploma projects at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, looked for ways to realize her work in public spaces.
Instead of the usual presentation of final projects at the school building, she reached out to a school for hearing-impaired children and youth on Holečkova Street in Prague and asked them to collaborate on the practical part of her thesis. Zuzana is taking the theme of sign language further. Together with the school staff, she created a sign language inscription on the wall of the school, under the Strahov hill, right by the Kobrova bus stop. The relief sculpture began prompting passersby to wonder what the inscription made of hands was shouting. The message: 'Life is beautiful, be happy and love yourselves,' caught the attention of both European and American media focused on sign language and public art. Right after returning from France, she participated in a competition for sculptural works in Prague 9, and later that same year, in collaboration with architect Ing. Luboš Jíra, the Madonino Secret sculpture group was created. Originally, there were supposed to be five Madonnas, but in 2010 only three were installed because the district didn’t have enough budget for the artworks. In France, she arranged a work internship with Internationally recognized sculptor Vladimír Škoda. Here she learned to work with metal, which she would immediately use upon returning to the Czech Republic in her series of works A-LA-MERKUR (for example, the frequently exhibited objects Birth and Question of Birth). She did not make it to the opening of the traveling exhibition at the National Museum because she returned to France again. Not only for her exhibition at the Galerie internationale d’art contemporaine Thuillier in central Paris, but also due to trips to other parts of France (Lyon, Thiers, La Monnerie-le Montel). Again, she drew and painted many paintings there, which she sent to the Czech Republic by mail after taking them off the blind frames. Among other key themes Zuzana was developing at this time is sign language, now as lithography, painting, and sculpture.
In 2009, before another trip to exhibit in Paris, Zuzana entered a competition for contemporary artists with her pink-colored sculptural work, a relief with hands showing the finger alphabet for 'I love'. For this relief MILUJI, she received the Wintontrain award, Inspiration of Good Prague-London. During these For several years, she regularly exhibited at prestigious exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad on the professional scene (Paris – Grand Palais – Art en Capital, Rome – Basilica Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Brussels – Presidential Gallery, …), even though applications and participation in the professional and extracurricular art scene did not correspond with the opinions of her teachers. She also ventured into sculpting from electronic components. Her best-known and most successful works are the ELEKTROCROSSES, which, among other pieces, traveled for several years to exhibitions across Europe (where Zuzana submitted her works for selection, as the theme of the Czech Bible through the centuries resonated with her current artistic work, in which she explored the concept of faith among the majority population around her). She also created jewelry, which she used in arranged photographs with live models, and at other times attached them to her cement busts.
From 2005 to 2006, Zuzana attended the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in Kurt Gebauer's studio and concurrently studied pedagogical disciplines at various schools. Her expressive She entered her modeled sculptures into a competition for artists under thirty, organized by the French association Artistes Indépendants. The competition offered young artists from newly admitted EU countries the chance to participate for free in the 116th Salon des Indépendants in Paris. Under the auspices of the Union of Fine Artists of the Czech Republic and the Ministry of Culture, she represented the Czech Republic at the world salon in Paris with her intimate bronze sculpture Venus. During her stay, besides artists of various ages and nationalities, she also got to know Czech-French surrealists from around Jiří Kolář. On every visit to Paris, she especially looked forward to Prokop Voskovec, who at first was particularly impressed by Zuzana's sculpture The Water Sprite, because it apparently resembled him. He wrote several poems to Zuzana and came up with artistic pseudonyms for her. In emails, he wrote, for example: “I came up with names for you in two variants. For Czechs, Zora Kamenická, and for the world, Wanda Stones.” Ultimately, the pseudonym didn’t happen, because by that time Zuzana was already presenting herself in the media and on the At exhibitions abroad like Zuzana Čížková, or Chiscova Suzana. During her stay, she painted with watercolors, drew, and also created several collages combined with drawing. After returning, she focused on lithography, which Zuzana had chosen as an elective practical subject at school, and her work from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague was sent to various exhibitions. From Paris, Zuzana received many offers from galleries and returned to Paris to exhibit for many years. In painting and lithography, she began working on a series of works called Birth, symbolizing the importance of humanity's symbiosis with nature. In 2005, film director Hana Pinkavová noticed Zuzana and started continuously filming one of the episodes of the series Nehasit! Hořím!. A documentary film, Stone Sculptress Zuzana Čížková, was created, in which Zuzana appeared mainly as a sculptor working with stone, combining her two interests: geology and sculpture. During these years, Zuzana attended international sculpture and stone sculpting symposia, co-organizing one stone sculpting event. She co-organized and even organized two international sculpture symposia herself. And although the director's film crew also filmed Zuzana's painting work and, for sculpture, her work in bronze and other sculptural materials, the director used mainly everything related to stone in the half-hour film.
2003–2005 After graduating from high school, after four years mainly dedicated to sculpture, she returned to painting in her free work, especially oil on canvas. She applied to the Union of Visual Artists of the Czech Republic, an organization for professional artists, and was accepted. She enrolled in a higher vocational school in Zlín in the sculpture program with a focus on bronze. At that time, she was already making expressively modeled head sculptures. Their modeling was more suitable for casting in bronze, and at that time her great role model was the sculptor Eva Kmentová. However, after half a year, she returned to Brandýs to help her mother, who was fighting a tough battle with cancer, and at the same time began to work in Prague on Salmovská Street in Olbram Zoubek's studio, with whom she started to regularly regularly also exhibiting (Lughnasadh exhibitions organized by the academic painter Josef Ryzec). The Vodník sculpture (a cycle of sculptures called Beings) was created directly in Olbram's studio and is cast from his original osinkocement mixture. Around the same time, Zuzana and her father turned to the Research Institute of Mortars in Radotín with an order for the calculation and testing of a new mixture suitable for outdoor sculptural purposes, so that the mixture could hold very fine modeling details, withstand weather conditions longer than stone, and maintain consistent color over time. This was because the osinkocement that Zuzana worked with in Olbram Zoubek's studio was gradually becoming unavailable due to the ban on osinek. Later, Zuzana made arrangements with "concrete-cement workers" to carry out sculptural symposia and exhibitions. During these years, Zuzana focused mainly on sculpture and, in her two-dimensional artistic expression, on sketch drawings in ink, as well as painting motorcyclists in oil on canvas. In her final years of study, and even after graduation, that is, when she was already of legal age, she tru She regularly applied for internship opportunities and traveled, having the chance to get acquainted with work in sculpture studios in Switzerland and Italy. She worked, for example, in the Basel studio of a graduate of the Hořice stone-carving school, Studio für Stehlík, but also in the studio of the well-known Swiss sculptor and painter Ludwig Stocker. Since childhood, she has been fascinated by stones, shells, as well as architecture and people, which appeared in her work, and she dealt with questions of the symbiosis between humans and nature. For her graduation exam, she created the sculpture Rano Rara Ku, and in the written part of her defense, she described the story of this island, which increasingly resembled our present one. We are destroying planet Earth, from which it will no longer be possible to sail elsewhere. She told stories of indigenous people who had destroyed their island so much that they no longer even had anything to build rafts to leave the island. At the beginning of high school, in her figurative sculpture work, she was inspired by deaf people signing in a noisy biker club the club that Zuzana really enjoyed visiting, and among the long-haired princes on two wheels, she even had a boyfriend. For the first time, she combined the traditional sculptural motif of hands with sign language. 1999–2003 She studied sculpture at the Secondary Industrial School of Stone Sculpture as a combination of two favorite subjects: visual arts and geology, and of course the crafty work that Zuzana had always liked, which also helped her focus better on theoretical subjects. For example, in elementary school, due to her restlessness, she crushed her little finger on her right hand while doing a somersault over a desk during a boring geography lesson. Her first solo exhibition, "Small Salon-Details," was organized for Zuzana by the Čelákovice Museum in 1999, because artistic dedication was very unusual for such a young girl. Initially, she focused mainly on painting with tempera, ink, aniline, and oil. Among Zuzana's most frequent subjects in her free creations were nature, architecture, or saints in the form of illuminations. By 2002, her solo exhibition "Small Salon-Untraditionally Classical" had already taken place. , focused especially on oil painting on canvas.
1990–1988 She visited the geological cabinet of the National Museum with her continuously growing collection. One piece of 'rock' was eventually temporarily borrowed by the National Museum for its exhibition. With her friend Standa, who was a year older, they painted stones, wooden hearts, Rumcajs, and other scraps, modeled figures out of clay, and sold these creative objects, especially during football matches for promotion to a higher league, when the town of Brandýs nad Labem had an attendance of up to two thousand people.
……. And as she says: 'Even if you throw a stone at me,
I won’t stray from my path.'