Back to the East

He kept a diary recording his travels in China, put together with many sketches of the landscapes he saw. These texts and drawings inspired his creation of lithographs themed on China in the late 1950s, and some from this series of prints are also on show at the ongoing Beijing exhibition.

Lucie Olivova, an associate professor of Chinese studies at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, says the artist beautifully drew Beihai Park, his most-visited place in Beijing, and the streets with antiques stores in neighborhoods such as Liulichang and Longfusi. Olivova has studied Sklenar's diary.

Sklenar drew whatever he found interesting, such as the decorative patterns on palace pillars, window frames and lamps when visiting the Forbidden City-he went there at least three times-as well as the shapes of rice fields he saw from flights and the napkins folded like blossoms in glass cups when he ate at restaurants.

Olivova says Sklenar studied Chinese pictorial elements for years, and was an early artist in Czechoslovakia to present Chinese imagery in oil paintings.