Viktor Oliva was a master of drawing, illustration, and painting born in
Nové Strašecí,
Bohemia,
Austria-Hungary 24 April 1861. His main style was
Art Nouveau. At the age of 17 he attended the
Academy of Fine Arts, Prague and studied under
František Sequens, who greatly respected his work. He continued his studies at the
Munich Academy. In 1888 he was drawn to the
Montmartre area of
Paris to be part of the ever rapidly expanding artistic community there. He lived there for some years and became good friends with other "Bohemian Parisiens" such as
Luděk Marold,
Mikoláš Aleš,
Jakub Arbes, and
Karel Vítězslav Mašek. This group of actual
Bohemians (from Bohemia) were right in the heart of the "
Bohemian Revolution". Not long after that, she gave birth to his son Viktor Oliva Jr. (who also was an aspiring artist). The marriage didn't last long, as Anna ran away with a singer named Mařák. Oliva was still able to spend some time with his son, which brought him much joy. Over the next quarter century, Oliva was very prolific in his work. He spent a lot of time with his worldly best friend
Josef Kořenský (a true world traveler at a time when this was difficult). Oliva was commissioned to create many dramatic works including the ceilings of several buildings in Bohemia. He also had several works hanging in his favorite cafe,
Café Slavia (which still has his most famous work
Piják absintu (
Absinthe Drinker) hanging inside). He was profiled in
Český Svět magazine in 1926, two years before his death. Here is a translation of the text: "Anniversary of the life (65th birthday) of such a kind and likable artist sets our memories well back – to the end of the 1880s – when the very young artist Oliva began to help with artistic decoration of Czech books with such an elegance and charm, that he soon became one of the most famous Czech illustrators up there with
Luděk Marold, for example. Oliva did illustrations for several books of
Svatopluk Čech,
Jan Neruda,
Karel Václav Rais,
Václav Beneš Třebízský,
Kronbauer – those were published for almost two decades with his illustrations. As a landscape and figure artist, huge canvases of Oliva hang in
Café Slavia, the walls of buildings on
Slavia Island, and Měšťanská Beseda in
Plzeň. He died on 5 April 1928 in Prague and was buried in
Olšany Cemetery in an area for famous artists. == Opinions from the art world of the early 21st century ==