František Petrák

Mr. František Petrák deals with painting, drawing, graphics, applied illustration for children, literary-dramatic genres, stage design and marionette theatre.
He lives and works in the town of Luhačovice and he is an art teacher at the Secondary School of Applied Art in the town of Uherské Hradiště and University of Tomas Bata.

František Petrák was born in Vsetín in 1961.
He studied at the Secondary School of Applied Art (SUPŠ) in Uherské Hradiště where he specialized in graphic design, the head of the course being Mr. František Nikl.
In 1985 he graduated from the Teachers Training College in the town of Ostrava. There he studied fine art and Czech language and literature.
Now, besides teaching art to students at SUPŠ Uherské Hradiště, he deals with painting, graphic design, illustration for children, literary-dramatic genres, stage design and marionette theatre.
At the same time he is a lecturer of graphic design at the Faculty of Multimedia Communication - Institute of Visual Communication at the Tomáš Baťa University in Uherské Hradiště.

The leading topic of his paintings has always been relation between the form and colour in space which he tries to solve in his large general subject cycles.
After subjects like owls, trees, fish and your star he pays his attention to the subject of a tree – man which he changes in an abstract way into branching forms in contrast colours.
He exhibits his free art work either in the Czech Republic or abroad, he has individual exhibitions or participates in collective ones.

Together with artist Petr Nikl he belongs to the founding members of MEHEDAHA Association which published a „samizdat“ miscellany called Mehedaha, they organized public performances of marionette theatre and „flat meetings“ in the 80s of the 20th century.
Mr. Petrák goes on in organizing similar projects up to now using various genres.
In 1992, he stage-managed a marionette performance Carmina Burana composed by Carl Orff using five hundred marionettes and a girl ballet group.
He often deals with stage design (e.g. he designed stage for „Prsy Tirresiovy“by Guillaume Appolinaire for Theater Brett in Vienna).
At the beginning of 90s he cooperated with Theater im Stadl in Gunterdorf.
Cooperating with Mr. Michal Zeman he wrote a musical fairy tale about Tom-cat detectives, called Tom-cat Holmes and Tom-cat Watson, which was performed at the Moravian Slovak Theatre in Uherské Hradiště in 2001 and 2002 theatrical seasons. There Mr. Petrák designed the stage and theatrical costumes.

František Petrák often creates drewn and painted cycles. Fot the last ten years he has been commisioned to design theatre posters and propagation brochures for Mr. J.A.Pitínský (theatre director) performances in the Moravian Slovak Theatre in Uherské Hradiště and for the Town Theatre in the city of Zlín.

A proof of his work of general conception in applied graphics is the graphic design of Prameny edition which was founded by the town of Luhacovice in 2004.
The edition has published 7 books so far.

Children books illustration has belonged among the major lasting topics of Mr. Petrák´s creative work. His illustrations were printed in the children magazine Sluníčko in 80s and 90s of the last century. Picture book for children called Friends from the Alphabet (Archa, Zlín, 1991) was awarded a silver medal at the XVth International Bienalle of Applied Graphics in Brno in 1992. Using wooden motives by a wood carver Mr. Josef Šimek, Mr. Petrák designed a graphic part for the book Fairy Tales from Moravia (Zlín, 2004). In 2002, Fairy Tales, Myths and Narrative Tales from Valachia by Eva Eliášová was published, the book was illustrated by Franišek Petrák.