Zdeněk Manina

The academic sculptor Zdeněk Manina (*11 September 1961, Kladno) is a Czech sculptor, painter, ceramicist, draughtsman and art teacher. He spent the first six years of his life in Terezín, after which the family returned to Kladno. Education: grammar school in Kladno (1976–1980); Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, studio of ceramics and porcelain (1980–1986). Professor Otto Eckert was leaving the studio at the time, so Manina found himself a consultant in Professor František Burant — a printmaker, painter and sculptor — through whom he moved away from applied art and turned to painting and sculpture.

Career: artist at DUV Keramo Prague (1987–1994); assistant professor in the studio of ceramics and porcelain at the Institute of Applied Arts of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem (1994–1997); art teacher at the grammar school in Kladno (1997–2000 and since 2007); assistant professor in the studio of ceramics and porcelain at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (2003–2005). He was present at the founding of the Kladno Courtyards festival and, together with František Tomík, organises the Kladno Salon biennial. His studio is in the Podprůhon quarter of Kladno.

Work and materials: while in the late 1980s he oscillated between figurative-animal and abstracting forms, since the 1990s he has worked the human figure in ceramic mass, fired clay and stoneware, and also in fibreglass, bronze, concrete, sandstone, cast iron and iron. His main subject is the human being caught in movement; individual figures are often joined into series, groups and installations in which gestures repeat, multiply and turn into action — struggle, contest, a ritual of movement. The originally anonymous male figure was joined after 2000 by children’s and female figures. He took part in the international survey of ceramic sculpture European Ceramic Context 2014.

Solo exhibitions (selection): Jiří Wolker Theatre Prague and Gallery 55 Kladno (1989); Kladno City Museum (1994); Kladno Chateau Gallery and Křivoklát Castle (1998); Tula Art Center, Atlanta, USA (1999); We Shall Fly — U prstenu Gallery Prague and Rabas Gallery Rakovník (2000), Chodov Fortress Prague (2001); Balance — Gallery of the City of Plzeň (2002); Exemplary — U Dobrého pastýře Gallery, Brno (2005); …the bed of a ford is sometimes paved — Aleš South Bohemian Gallery, Hluboká nad Vltavou (2010); Personalist — Lidice Memorial, Lidice Gallery (2011); Blades Blunt, Blades Are Sharpened — Ostrov Summer Palace (2012); Exposition — Nová síň Gallery, Prague (2017); Swimmers and Other Figures — Gallery of the City of Plzeň (2022); They and the Others — Rabenstejnská, České Budějovice (2026).

Works: fountains on T. G. Masaryk Avenue in Kladno (1996, 2002), stained glass and the bronze sculpture Točná (1999), a memorial to the fallen in Braškov (2010), a figurative sculpture for Vitry-sur-Seine in France (2009, Kladno’s twin town), a memorial plaque to Rostislav Čtvrtlík in Olomouc (2012), the cast iron sculptural group We Shall Fly (Kladno-Podprůhon, 2018), a memorial plaque to J. W. Goethe in Loket (2018), the ceramic sculpture Wheelwright (Kladno, 2019), the Thanksgiving monument (Chorušice-Zahájí, 2022) and the bronze sculpture Swimmers for the swimming pool in Kladno (2022). At the Art in the City festival he showed Balance (2024, the canopy of the Budweis hotel in Hradební street, České Budějovice) and Chain (2025, suspended from the Golden Bridge in České Budějovice).

Represented in collections: Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, Aleš South Bohemian Gallery — International Museum of Ceramics in Bechyně, Gallery of West Bohemia in Plzeň, Moravian Gallery in Brno, Rabas Gallery Rakovník. A monograph, Zdeněk Manina (Gallery of Art Karlovy Vary, 2012, ISBN 978-80-87420-06-5), has been published.