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František Lipták
Profile

The visual artist and stage designer František Lipták was born in Poprad. Between 1977 and 1981, he studied promotional graphics at the Middle Art and Industry School in Košice (the present School of Applied Arts, Košice). He then continued his studies at the Academy of Performing Arts (1981–1986), where he graduated in stage design in the class of Ladislav Vychodil.

Lipták created his first stage and costume art for professional theatre while still a student – he created the first professional theatre set and costumes for the Jonáš Záborský Theatre in Prešov and its production Sin (1985). Since 1986, he has worked for nearly all Slovak theatres and has often been invited to work for stages in the Czech Republic and Poland. In 1990, he worked briefly as set director at the State Puppet Theatre in Bratislava (the present Bratislava Puppet Theatre). In the same year, he and director Ondrej Spišák founded the independent theatre company Teatro Tatro, in which he has worked as a stage designer until today. Lipták has also worked on several productions during Spišák’s era in the Puppet Theatre as well as the Old Theatre in Nitra. He regularly collaborates with the Slovak National Theatre and the Radošina Naive Theatre. He created several successful stage designs in Poland, for example, The Snow Queen (Opolski teatr lalki i aktora, 1999), The Marriage of Figaro and Robinson Cruzoe (Teatr Nowy, Łodż, 2000 and 2002), or Merlin. The Other History (Teatr Narodowy in Warsaw, 2003). Some of these productions received awards.

Since 1991, he has been also doing film sets. As an architect, he has worked on the resonant Slovak films in the 1990s directed by Martin Šulík: Everything I Like (1992), The Garden (1995), Orbis Pictus (1997), Killing (1999), and Landscape (2000). He worked with Václav Vorlíček on the movie The Firebird (1997), with Miroslav Šindelka on A Passionate Kiss (1994), and with Agnieszka Holland on such films as The Third Miracle (1999) and Jánošík. The True Story (2009).

Lipták is a versatile artist with a broad and varied range of artistic production. He is skillful in several crafts and visual art techniques and has mastered graphic programmes. He designs theatre costumes and posters and is also a book illustrator. A dominant portion of his art is free painting.

In his free art, he finds inspiration in everyday, banal, and simple situations. His works feature the typical character of a stylized little man who has become the symbol of witty text interpretations. Lipták has created numerous single exhibitions, such as The Robber’s Altar (1997), Vain and Useless (1996), The Devil Never Sleeps (1997), or After All (1999). He exhibited his visual art in Poland, France, Austria, Germany, Canada, and the Czech Republic. He has his own gallery in Lišov. For his work, he has been awarded in Slovakia as well as in the Czech Republic and Poland.