Jindra Viková (born 2 February 1946) is a Czech sculptor, ceramicist, painter, curator and lecturer at art schools in the United States and New Zealand,Zdeněk Freisleben: Jindra Viková, Keramika a sklo 4, 2005, pp. 7–9 and a member of juries at international competitions. She has received several prestigious awards abroad for her work. Since 1983, she has been a member of the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC) in Geneva, and since 2004 a member of the IAC committee, where she represents Central and Eastern European countries.Zindelová M: Jindra Viková, 2025, p. 61
Life Jindra Viková was born on 2 February 1946 in Prague. She comes from a family of bank clerk. Both her parents and her elder sister Jaroslava were artistically gifted – her mother designed her own clothing patterns, her father Jindřich Vik was an amateur painter. His later works are classified as Art brut.Art brut: Jindřich Vik Between 1960 and 1964, Viková attended Václav Hollar School of Fine Arts. Since 1964 she studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in the ceramics studio under Prof. Otto Eckert. Whilst a student, on 20 August 1968, she married the electrical engineer Pavel Baňka, a member of the beatnik circle around Václav Hrabě and a photographer. They went on their honeymoon to Italy a few days after the Soviet occupation in August 1968. In 1969, their daughter Markéta was born.Dům fotografie v Praze vystavuje Pavla Baňku. Fotil rodinu, černošské obyvatele USA či matky a dcery / The House of Photography in Prague is hosting an exhibition by Pavel Baňka. He photographed families, African Americans in the United States, and mothers and daughters, ČTK 2020Terezie Zemánková (ed.), Jindra Viková, odkazy a návraty / referrals and returns, 2010 She completed her studies in 1970.Jan Kříž, 1986, pp. 1–2 Their first Prague studio, in the basement of a house on Škrétova Street, was a meeting place for friends from the unofficial art scene.
In the early 1980s, she founded the neo-Dadaist collective Rozbřesk (Dawn) with Pavel Baňka and her friends. Over the years, members of the group included, for example, Emma Srnec and Jiří Srnec, Marcela and Jiří Slíva, Dana Zámečníková and Marian Karel, Miroslav Kořínek, Zdenek Sirový and his wife, Jaroslav Beneš, Jana Skalická, and others. Among the visitors were also Jan Schmid and Jana Synková, Václav Lukas, Milada Othová, Ondřej Soukup and Gabriela Osvaldová.Zindelová M, JV, 2025, pp. 44–50
In 1973, Viková was invited to take part in an international competition for artistic ceramics in Faenza, Italy, and the following year she held her first solo exhibition at the Small Gallery of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union in Prague.Milena Klasová, 1997, unpaginated In 1975, together with Peter Oriešek, she designed her first architectural project – a ceramic relief on the west façade of the Old Town Hall. In 1981, she won one of the main prizes in Faenza and, two years later, became a member of the prestigious international organisation International Academy of Ceramics (IAC). In 1982, Petr Skala made a documentary film about her (The World of Jindra Viková). As a creator of porcelain figurines, she contributed to Jan Bonaventura's animated film based on Andersen's fairy tale The Shepherdess And The Chimney Sweep.
In 1984, she was awarded a Gold Medal at the international ceramics competition in Faenza and, in 1986, the Grand Prix at the Porcelain Triennial in Nyon and a Gold Medal in Vallauris. In 1985, she was visited by the ceramicist and professor Marion Weiss Munk, who invited her and Pavel Baňka to the United States.Zindelová M: Jindra Viková, 2025, p. 53 Viková lectured at Middlesex County College New JerseyPatricia Malarcher, A Different Approach to Clay, The New York Times (2. 6. 1985)Marion Weiss-Munk, Czechoslovakia's Jindra Viková, Ceramics Monthly, September 1985 and the California School of the Arts and Crafts in Oakland.Silvia Girard, La revue de la céramique et du verne, September–October 1985
From 1973, Viková exhibited at the Internationale Kunstmesse in Munich, and from 1986 she regularly took part in international ceramics symposia and exhibitions. In 1988, she was invited to the 1st International Ceramics Symposium in Canberra under the auspices of UNESCO and worked at the School of Art there. In the same year, she won first prize for ceramics at the International Arts Festival in Baghdad. The following year, her work was featured in a major exhibition of contemporary European ceramics in Auxerre, which subsequently toured several other countries.
In the 1980s, the members of the Rozbřesk group included Magdalena Rychlíková and František Špergl, Helena Samohelová, Ivana Doležalová, Eliška and Rudolf Schránil, Vladimír Suchánek and his wife Zita, Klára Trnková, Jiří Stivín and his wife, Michaela Zindelová, Josef Vomáčka, Blanka Chocholová, Jiří Votruba and Pavel Calda. Rozbřesk organised lectures, local history walks, auctions of absurd items, trips to the mountains, Christmas parties with singing and dancing, flea markets and original theatre production Úšklebky sexu (The Smirks of Sex), directed by Zdenek Sirový and featuring Jiří Bartoška in the role of the narrator. The group Rozbřesk celebrated the fall of communism by staging the Ode to Joy and performing it on New Year's Eve 1989 on Wenceslas Square.
In 1990, Viková took part in a symposium in Römhild, and the following year she spent one academic term as a visiting lecturer at the Art School in Ann Arbor in Michigan. Together with Pavel Baňka, she exhibited at the Jacques Baruch Gallery in Chicago and solo at Galerie L in Hamburg. After 17 years, once again at the Czechoslovak Writer's Gallery in Prague.
In 1992, at the invitation of Jimmy Clark, director of Clay Studio in Philadelphia, she attended a conference organised by the American organisation of sculptors and ceramists ENSICA and was invited to take part in the travelling exhibition Contemporary East European Ceramics held there. Later that same year, she took part in a bone china symposium in Kaunas and two exhibitions in England – the Festival of European Ceramics in Dorset and an exhibition organised by the International Federation of Medallic Art. In the Czech Republic, her work was featured in the major travelling exhibition Sochahlína (Cheb, Prague, Karlovy Vary). She spent most of the following year, 1993, in the United States, where, as a visiting lecturer, she taught for two semesters in the ceramics studio at Ohio University in Athens and spent two months at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 1994, she was appointed General Commissioner of the competition and curator of the Fletcher Challenge Ceramics Award exhibition in Auckland. The following year, she led a workshop at the University of Canberra, and a year later, she ran the ceramics programme for the abroad semester of Ohio University in Prague.
The year 1997 was a significant one for Viková. Together with her husband, she embarked on a six-month residency at the Sitka Centre for Art and Ecology in Oregon, which had a significant influence on the subsequent work of both artists. There, she befriended the sculptor and founder of the centre Frank Boyden, and created a series of large ceramic busts for an exhibition in Portland.
After 1998, Viková took part in international symposia in Turkey (1998), Denmark and Poland (2000), Italy and Slovakia (2001), Turkey and Poland (2002), Austria (2005), Poland (2007) and on several occasions in Deidesheim, Germany (2007, 2009, 2010). She has lectured on several occasions at universities in the United States (Salem State's Center for Creative and Performing Arts, Oregon, 1998, 2000, Georgia State University, Atlanta, 2000, Santa Ana College, 2000, Long Island University, 2000 and New York University, New York, 2000, 2002, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 2002, Willamette University, Salem, 2005, Pingry School of Art, New Jersey, 2008). Since 1990, she has served on international juries for art competitions, and since 2004 she has been a member of the committee of the International Academy of Ceramics, where she represents Central and Eastern European countries. She was asked to select Eastern European artists for the FuLe International Ceramic Art Museum in China.
Since 2002, she has led annual two-week ceramic workshops at the Jarmila Tyrnerová Centre in Kohoutov. In 2014, she curated the Galerie Natura exhibitions at Průhonice Castle and, in 2015, the 'Tribute to Guttfreund' exhibition at the Rabas Gallery, Rakovník.
Work Viková uses porcelain and fired clay as sculptural materials.František Mikš, Jindra Viková – křehké záznamy o křehkosti člověka / fragile records of human fragility, Kontexty, časopis o kultuře a společnosti, 2025 Interpersonal relationships have become the central theme of her work. The gestures and expressions of her ceramic sculptures encapsulate fleeting moments etched into memory, as well as feelings, passions and desires.Zemánková T: Jindra Viková, 2012
As early as the 1970s, she was transforming originally functional ceramic objects (Doses, 1974) into free-standing sculptural works. Her early work includes spatial reliefs and figural compositions framed by metal structures, resembling small theatrical scenes (Dice Game, 1978). The subtle and intelligent humour of the stories she tells complements the prints of Adolf Born, with whom she exhibited at the Art-Books Gallery and later in Chrudim.Born a Viková vystavují, Lid. demokracie 1977 One of her sculptures – an imaginary portrait of a girl with her eyes covered (Decameron, 1979) – was commissioned by the Chamber Association for Music, Poetry, and the Visual Arts Lyra Pragensis. Viková moved on from the playful diversity of her ceramic work to a form of sculpture that is urgent and responsible in both expression and content.Jan Kříž, 1983, cat. Galerie Fronta, p. 2 Her ceramic sculptures, full of tenderness and imagination, honour the qualities of the material. She finishes the surface as required by painting and glazing it, or leaves it in its raw state.Koenigsmarková H, Homage to Jindra Viková, in: Jindra Viková, 2018, p. 156
Painting on glazes plays an important role in the meaning of Viková's works. In a series of relief tiles from the late 1970s, which formed a perfect counterpart to Petra Oriešková's paintings at a joint exhibition at the Fronta Gallery, she uses painting to create the illusion of deep space (Bay, 1978). Both artists were also characterised by an interest in big cats, their movement and the details of their anatomy (Penetration, 1979). Alongside objects depicting a narrative, she shaped a series of metaphorical situations featuring variations on human hand gestures (Plays, 1979) and a cycle of reliefs from a Polish ceramics symposium, which utilised the contrast between smooth porcelain tubes and a painted background and foreshadowed later relief assemblages (An Attempt to Harness the Elements, 1978).
The artist's inclination towards figurative art must necessarily have reflected the influences of the era, namely the so-called New Figuration, as well as touches of Pop art and the commercial world of advertising and fashion magazines.Kristián Suda, in: Milena Klasová (ed.), Jindra Viková, Praha 1997 Figurative motifs link themes spanning a wide range, from Surrealist imagination to Dadaist tricks.Zdeněk Freisleben: Jindra Viková - bez konce / without end, Ceramics Art 1, 2001, pp. 4–7 Equally important in her case was her personal experience with Renaissance art, which she encountered in 1969 whilst on her honeymoon in Italy.