The exhibition presents the work of two prominent Jihlava personalities, educators and artists, but above all long-time friends - sculptor Pavel Toman and painter Josef Macek.

Pavel Toman
Jihlava native Pavel Toman (born 23 January 1956) is not only a teacher, an important organizer of cultural life in Jihlava and the long-time chairman of the Association of Visual Artists of the Highlands, but above all a sculptor. He graduated from the Faculty of Arts at the UJEP in Brno, majoring in psychology-Russian-history. His teaching activity is connected with the Jihlava Secondary School of Construction, where he worked as a teacher and also its director. He started his sculptural work with small jewelry and miniatures, then gradually moved to larger works and abstract sculptures. Although at the beginning he experimented with different materials, he later focused almost exclusively on wood, which most corresponds to his creative intentions, and which he sometimes combines with metal or natural stone. This results in mostly larger sculptures of abstract and organic shapes, thematically reflecting his interest in the origin of life, the infinity of space, the action of natural elements, but also the capture of emotional states and the passage of time. Since 2001, he has been a member of the Association of Visual Artists of the Highlands, whose leadership he later took over from Josef Macek. He has had a number of individual and group exhibitions at home and abroad.
 

Josef Macek
The painter, graphic artist and teacher Josef Macek (March 12, 1936 – February 20, 2021) is also among the prominent personalities of Vysočina inextricably linked to Jihlava. He was born in Sázava near Žďár nad Sázavou, after graduating from the gymnasium in Nové Město na Moravě, he graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in Jihlava in 1959–1963 with teaching degree in Czech language, history and art education. After that, he settled permanently in Jihlava and dedicated himself to teaching for many years, enriching it with his own creative work in the 1980s, which filled him with a sense of freedom and self-realization. He received his artistic education mainly from Jihlava artists Josef Kos, Josef Bulant, Karel Hyliš and Alois Toufar. In his abstract work, his relationship to the landscape, his interest in the issues of human existence and his own experience of reality are reflected in particular. His ingeniously thought-out painting compositions are characterized by a spontaneous painting style full of dynamism, shape stylization and expressive colors. Since 1985, he has been a member of the Association of Visual Artists of the Highlands (with the Union of Fine Artists of the Czech Republic), which he also chaired for several years. Also, his exhibition activity, be it associational, collective or author's, is very rich.