Artist in Profile: Jan Hisek

October 15, 2023

Artist in Profile: Jan Hisek

Czech Graphic Artist Jan Hisek occupies a special niche among the East European small format printmakers in my collection. Entering his imaginative world is like voyaging twenty thousand leagues under the sea. In his monochrome mezzotints, biomorphic shapes gleam against backgrounds of black, resembling phosphorescent sea creatures lured out of sunless ocean trenches. They shape-shift into surreal scenes we recollect from myth and sacred story, often, themes from the Bible like this week's featured print of the Madonna and Child with angels and animals. Hisek has described his singular artistic vision as “psychedelic romanticism" and relies on his viewers’ familiarity with the conventions of sacred art to suggest biblical identifications for his shadowy balloon-like shapes in the graphic artworks now on view in the gallery of the new Hisek profile page in the Sacred Artists section. (John Kohan)