Artist defends copied artwork

A Prague-based painter is at the center of an international art scandal after he was caught stealing ideas from other people's images and selling the work online.

Marek Hospodářský, whose oil paintings sell for as much as $1,200 (23,000 Kč), has admitted he regularly copies the work of other artists to create his own pieces.

"I look for inspiration in photographs, or maybe something from films, the Internet or wherever. And then I try to elaborate on the piece, do something more with it," Hospodářský explains from inside his art studio in the middle of Prague.

His plagiarism was first uncovered in July when an Australian art dealer recognized that a Hospodářský print titled Bird, which was advertised in a catalog, looked remarkably similar to a photograph by award-winning Australian photographer Petrina Hicks.

It took several weeks to track the artist down to his home studio in Prague 7-Letná.

After numerous interview requests via e-mail, he finally agreed to talk about his artwork, with the help of his teenage son who acted as an interpreter.

Hospodářský creates his canvases in a studio that occupies a sizeable room directly above the family's flat on the fifth floor of a residential apartment block. The 44-year-old boasts he can produce an artwork within three days, but says most of his pieces take one or two weeks to complete, or sometimes even up to a month.

The father of two says he has yet to find a gallery that will showcase his work, but he manages to regularly sell his paintings online to buyers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.

Inside his studio hangs another painting of a young boy with a dog, and Hospodářský freely concedes the Young God work is another rip-off, this time of Hicks' photograph Jackson and Tiger.

Hospodářský says he doesn't want to create any problems so he no longer has the painting officially for sale online, but he admits if someone contacts him privately they can still buy it.

"A man contacted me on the Internet and was angry about my Bird painting and the Young God painting because he said they were not originals," Hospodářský says.

Although Hospodářský says he's received no other complaints, Hicks maintains that Hospodářský has plagiarized ideas from many other artists.

"I can also recognize the works of other well-known artists in his paintings. His work is 100 percent derivative," she told Australia's Sun-Herald newspaper. "Referencing artists happens all the time, especially in advertising agencies, and this cheapens art more."

"The copies he does are something less than the originals. But ultimately, it is not something that I have an issue with," she conceded.

However, international art dealer Saatchi was less forgiving when it was notified of the situation in July. Saatchi immediately pulled the Bird artwork from its website and said it would contact the artist.

On his own website, Hospodářský declares, "Painting, it's a mystery and I'm its follower."

And despite the howls of protests from critics, it seems he's continued to follow the artistic ideas of others.

Andrew Greene can be reached at
agreene@praguepost.com