Czech draftsman, illustrator, painter and graphic artist Václav Boukal (June 18, 1922, Vlachovo Březí – October 13, 2007, České Budějovice) lived almost his entire life in South Bohemia and drew inspiration for his artistic creation from there. He liked to draw from an early age. He was enchanted above all by the work of Mikoláš Aleš, a painter intrinsically connected to the distinctive traditions and more ordinary life of ordinary people.
He first studied with Professor Jaroslav Šváb at Officina Pragensis (1941–1942) and in the years 1945–1949 at the Prague Academy with Professors Vratislav Nechleba and Vlastimil Rada. In 1947, he completed a study stay at the Academy in Krakow, Poland.
Václav Boukal devoted himself to book illustration, free and applied graphics and monumental work in architecture. He worked as a member of artistic commissions and juries in the Association of Czech Visual Artists. He also published a number of professional texts and worked as a teacher. He began to devote himself to book illustration shortly after the end of the Second World War. Among his first illustration works were the works of Alois Jirásek, the most important of which was Jirásek's "Brotherhood". In 1947, he published a commemorative book with his illustrations, "The Fool Carries the Truth in a Trunk", in which he drew on his own experiences from forced labour in Germany (1942–1945). He later returned to this topic with the book "Graduation in Iron Rain" (1980).
In the 1950s he became a sought-after illustrator of a number of books by Czech authors of the 19th and 20th centuries (e.g. "Village Novel" by Karolina Světlá or "Of yesteryear" by Zikmund Winter) and collaborated with some contemporary writers. He also illustrated books for children and young adults, and is the author of the graphic form of a number of coloring books, cutouts, posters, diplomas and calendars. In the field of monumental decorative work, he realized a glass mosaic and a wall painting for the hall of the train station in České Budějovice, and he also created other mosaic decorations for the interior of The Museum of Working Class Movement there.
As a draftsman and painter, he mainly devoted himself to folklore, village and landscape subjects in his free work. And just such a theme is also depicted on a small work from the property of OGV in Jihlava. In a colored ink drawing from 1956, Boukal captured the traditional rural custom of bringing out Death-Morana. Morana is the goddess of winter, night and death in Slavic mythology. According to tradition, the final departure of the winter season and the celebration of spring takes place on the so-called "Smrtná Sunday". This is probably a West Slavic custom, the roots of which go back to pagan times. Morana or Death is a dummy, often understood as a personification of death or winter, which is ritually burned, melted or buried. The drawing depicts in an open landscape a group of several children walking in a procession behind a couple carrying a straw maiden dressed in women's clothes and decorated with blown eggs and ribbons. A group with a running boy in the foreground is accompanied by a village dog running around. Even if Boukal's artistic expression is due to the requirements of the so-called socialist realism of the time, his characteristic ability of expertly mastered and vividly executed drawing is evident here.
Jana Bojanovská