Ondřej Mestek

Bio

Ondřej Mestek, a graduate of the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Prague (2008–2012, Applied Painting) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (2012–2018, Painting I Studio, Jiří Sopek’s School, Robert Šalanda’s School), focuses in his painting practice on the theme of an updated landscape and human presence within it. He brings selected areas to life through their specific features, unique atmosphere, and climatic variability. He sees not only typical local architecture as an integral part of the landscape, but also its inhabitants and visitors, who shape the character of the environment and bring movement and vitality into it.

A characteristic part of his work is a series devoted to mountains and mountain tourism, where contemporary reality and figures of skiers mix with an allegorical past and legends full of magical places inhabited by picturesque characters. The mountains revive memories shaped by family photo albums, postcard scenes, and retro fashion. Similarly, his reflections on recreational areas carry a melancholic look back at a childhood that is both lost and rediscovered.

Mestek’s exceptional sense for color, the movement of figures, and subtle underlying irony gives his paintings the charm of something familiar, subconscious, and slightly provocative—something that has faded with time but occasionally resurfaces as a captivating, seductive feeling of returning to places that know us intimately.