Zdeněk Burian

Zdeněk Michael František Burian (11 February 1905 – 1 July 1981) was a Czech painter, book illustrator and palaeoartist.

Burian's artwork played a central role in the development of palaeontological reconstruction and he is regarded as one of the most influential palaeoartists of all time.

Zdeněk Michael František Burian was born on 11 February 1905 in the town of Kopřivnice, then part of Moravia in Austria-Hungary.

In his youth, Burian's talent for art was noticed by his art teacher A. P. Bartoň, who encouraged him to pursue further artistic education.

In the interwar period (i.e. 1918–1939), Burian became famous in Czechoslovakia as an illustrator of adventure novels and classic works.

He collaborated with numerous publishers and illustrated Czech releases of the works of authors such as Jules Verne, Karl May, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling, and Daniel Defoe.

Burian also illustrated books by Czech authors, such as Jaroslav Foglar, as well as explorers and travellers, such as Emil Holub, Alberto Vojtěch Frič, and.

In terms of style, Burian was very much influenced by artists of the nineteenth century and never leaned towards any particular artistic movement.

Although Burian continued to paint artwork for adventure novels through most of his life and such art accounts for the greatest share of his output, he is for the most part only known internationally for his palaeontological and palaeoanthropological artwork.

Burian is most well-known both in the Czech Republic and internationally for his oil paintings.

In addition to these, he also produced many gouache paintings and line drawings.

In 1919, Burian graduated from a municipal school and began an education in art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

Burian did not complete his education at the academy.

Burian began his career as an illustrator in the 1920s and became famous in his native Czechoslovakia for his illustrations of novels, mainly adventure novels and classic works.

He completed his second year in July 1920 and began the third year, though dropped out in the fall of 1920.

Instead of pursuing further studies, Burian began to make a living as an illustrator.

The first book to be illustrated by Burian, a Czech edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, was released in 1921.

Burian began painting artwork depicting prehistoric life in the 1930s, the first completed painting being a 1935 piece depicting two temnospondyls.

He is known to have been inspired to pursue palaeoart by the paintings of the American painter Charles R. Knight, with additional inspiration perhaps also coming in the form of childhood experiences at fossil sites.

In the twentieth century, it was common for palaeontological reconstructions to only be produced through the efforts of paired artists and palaeontological advisors and authors.

There were several such pairs, although the pairing of Burian and the palaeontologist Josef Augusta remains one of the most famous.

His illustrations of the novel The Mammoth Hunters (1937) by Eduard Štorch gained the attention of the Czech palaeontologist Josef Augusta, who collaborated with Burian as a scientific advisor.

Augusta approached Burian about collaborating after Burian illustrated the adventure novel The Mammoth Hunters (Širým světem) by Eduard Štorch in 1937.

Burian's first painting known to have been completed with the advice and oversight of Augusta was a 1938 oil painting depicting Trachodons being attacked by a Tyrannosaurus rex.

This painting, along with others, was published in the early 1940s in serials written by Augusta, called The Wonders of the Prehistoric World (Divy prasvěta).

Through the late 1940s, Burian illustrated several of Augusta's palaeontology-themed short stories.

Prior to the end of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1945, Augusta and Burian's work was suppressed by the occupation authorities.

He would through the 1950s also go on to illustrate a number of books, collaborate with other researchers, and provide paintings for museums and other institutions.

Their collaboration resulted in Burian's work being used in a number of books on prehistoric life written by Augusta, culminating in a series of six great illustrated volumes published in 1956–1966, the most famous of which was Prehistoric Animals (1956).

The most well-known result of Augusta and Burian's collaboration was a series of six great volumes on prehistoric life published by Atria; Prehistoric Animals (1956), Prehistoric Man (1960), Prehistoric Reptiles and Birds (1961), The Book of Mammoths (1962), Prehistoric Sea Monsters (1964), and The Age of Monsters (1966).

These large-format books were first only published in Czechoslovakia but eventually reached international publishers and garnered Burian popularity worldwide in countries such as Germany, France, England, Japan, and Italy.

The American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould assessed Prehistoric Animals as one of the three most influential books on prehistory published in the twentieth century.

After Augusta's death in 1968, Burian worked with numerous other scientists.

He continued to produce artwork for further books, as well as for magazines and museums.

It is not known precisely how many paintings Burian produced, with estimates ranging between 1000 and 20,000.

Between 500 and 800 of his paintings were prehistoric reconstructions.

In total, his illustrations were published in over 500 books, out of which approximately two dozen were on prehistory.

Many of his paintings have reached an iconic status; they were extensively copied by later artists and influenced conceptions of dinosaurs and how they were depicted in popular culture.

Following Augusta's death in 1968, Burian collaborated with various other scientists.

This later period of his career in palaeontological art also coincided with the discoveries and art trends of the Dinosaur renaissance, to which Burian reacted positively and worked to adapt.