Zdeněk Ruffer

Zdeněk Ruffer was born on 22 February 1971 in Prague. He graduated from Professor Kurt Gebauer’s sculpture studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. He works as a sculptor, artist and teacher — he teaches printmaking techniques, lithography, modelling and anatomy for artists at the Václav Hollar Secondary School of Art in Prague.

Since the 1990s Ruffer has worked chiefly with sculptures and objects in cast concrete, which today stand in many places across the Czech Republic. He came to like concrete as an available and inexpensive material that he can make and work himself. Into his works — often based on real objects or particular people — he tries to put a humour that need not be apparent at first glance.

Among his best-known works is the object The Air in a Car (1999), in which he cast the interior space of a car in concrete. He is also the author of Zdeněk’s Armchair (2003) and of the group Swimmers (2009) for the water features by the Invalidovna in Prague. In 2017, together with Aleš Vyjídák, he made the monument to the flying ace František Fajtl in Prague-Vokovice.

At the Art in the City festival in České Budějovice he showed the concrete work Ionic Column on Lannova třída, part of the thematic line called Fragility.