Jiří Šalamoun: Czech Republic Illustrator

The peak season of our livesAnd nobody notices anything?That's a good one ...but that is exactly what you do not want!

Jiří Šalamoun

Born in Prague in 1935, Jiří Šalamoun has garnered over 50 international awards during his varied career illustrating and designing for stage, film, posters, books and magazines. He has worked in book illustration, cartoon films, television, and printmaking, and also as an editor of publications about photography and film.

Šalamoun studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. As a professor of Graphic Art and Illustration at the Prague School of Applied Arts, he has also found time to illustrate more than 100 books and over 40 cartoons, as well as creating countless theater posters, stage sets, and lithographs. His links with more than 30 cartoon films have been very popular, particularly the 26-part series about Maxipes Fík produced between 1975 and 1984. His cartoons have delighted children for decades, and readers of all ages have enjoyed his illustrative interpretations of classics by Dickens, Bunin, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Tolkien, and James Fenimore Cooper, among others.

Šalamoun thinks like a filmmaker and each illustration narrates an entire world infused with dramatic pace. He is particularly drawn to the older dramatic forms of grotesque and humor, using ironic distance to underscore the existential humor in the human story. Jan Rous wrote this about Šalamoun's oeuvre: "In his illustrations, Šalamoun is not a narrator who would simply present his story or describe its action—his illustrations are something between interpretation and commentary … Šalamoun's understanding of the world meanders along varied paths; it penetrates the labyrinth of the world, whose various trails may lead all the way to the heaven of the heart, or again to the dust of childhood itself. Šalamoun's perennial guide to this labyrinth is, of course, humor, which makes almost all paths more passable. He is sarcastic, at times acerbic; for the children's world he is nonetheless shaded by a gentleness which disguises nothing."

Jiří Šalamoun's work in printmaking and books has been presented at major exhibitions throughout the world for over 40 years. Fluent in five languages, he is a much sought-after lecturer.