Oldrich Majda

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Oldrich Majda (April 5, 1930 – 2006) was a Slovak artist: a painter, illustrator and sculptor. He was born with a heart defect and doctors said he would only live ten years, but he lived much longer. He began painting at age ten. From 1949 to 1953 he studied architecture at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava and scenography at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. Until 1968 he worked as a technical and graphic editor for various newspapers and magazines. During the normalization years (1970–1990) he could not work in the new system or show his art. He started as a painter and stage designer at the decoration workshop of the Slovak National Theatre. In 1970 he rented land and built a workshop where he created most of his sculptures. Over the next 35 years he dug catacombs under his retreat, more than 250 meters long, with rooms and wall sculptures. After 1990 he worked as an illustrator but mainly focused on his art. He had more than 40 solo exhibitions in Slovakia and abroad. His style was influenced by French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. He was mainly a landscape painter, but he worked in other styles and with patchwork; his sculptures are less known. His total output is estimated at about 4,000 works. Many works were donated for charity, including a project in Osaka, Japan, for the Children’s Hospital in Lehnice. In 2008 he received the Suchohrad Citizenship Award.