The first thing you will notice is the woolly mammoth. Located at the back of the gallery, he beckons to visitors with his giant, hoary, taxidermied head.

The large-scale oil paintings that line the room depict prehistoric animals, eerily lifelike, imagined to the smallest detail. You can count the warts on the skin of the Kronosaurus. Bold color and quick, sure-handed brushstrokes inject movement and life into creatures no living person has ever seen. Pterodactyls circle the looming figures of beasts such as the Stegosaurus; Neanderthals battle with wild animals; and prehistoric vegetation grows from bubbly swamplands.

A visitor might be forgiven for thinking he had accidentally stumbled onto a school field trip to the museum of natural history.

And, indeed, the retrospective of works by Zdeněk Burian, one of the Czech Republic's most beloved and at the same time most underappreciated illustrators, does evoke a certain element of childhood nostalgia. After all, most people's first encounter with the artist's work was through his illustrations in encyclopedias of prehistory, or in adventure books.

Burian occupies an odd place in the history of Czech art. Child prodigy, stubborn romantic, misunderstood genius struggling to make a living — he always stood on the sidelines of the art world. From an early age, Burian had to support himself through his art, illustrating popular novels and calendars. He quickly developed a highly realistic style, from which he never strayed during his 60-year career. For Burian, it was almost as if modern art never happened. In fact, he repeatedly expressed his contempt for modernists, and famously accused Pablo Picasso of destroying the European artistic tradition.

So while no one ever doubted Burian's talent, when it came to evaluating the artistic merit of his work, many people were at a loss.

Perhaps it's inevitable, then, that the exhibition at the Prague Castle Riding Hall, organized to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Burian's birth, has received similarly mixed reactions. While some critics applaud Burian's virtuosity and imagination, others deride his work as being naive, kitschy and anachronistic.

This doesn't faze Vladimír Prokop, the curator of the exhibition. "Burian isn't for everyone," he says, but adds, "Labeling his work as kitsch is grossly incorrect."

Like many of his contemporaries, Burian was an avid fan of Western films and novels, and he embraced the highly romanticized, back-to-nature tramping lifestyle that became popular among Czechs between the world wars.

Burian's illustrations for adventure books by authors such as Jules Verne, Arthur Ransome and James Fenimore Cooper — all widely read during that period — became popular particularly among young people. Using only gouache on cardboard, Burian was able to bring everyone's favorite characters to life, transporting readers into exotic lands they could only dream about. That was a big part of Burian's appeal, according to Prokop, who made sure to include a wide selection of adventure-book illustrations in the exhibit.

Although Burian never traveled farther than Italy, he had a keen interest in foreign cultures. He worked closely with ethnographers and kept a massive archive of reference photographs. His research when working on prehistoric paintings was similarly thorough, and it is in this sphere that he gained the most renown and influence. "The whole world still sees prehistory through the eyes of Zdeněk Burian," says Prokop.