(1893, Frenštát pod Radhoštěm – 1926, Dolní Mokropsy) Painter, graphic artist and journalist. From 1909 to 1914 he studied at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts under Vlaho Bukovac, Hanuš Schwaiger and Maxmilián Pirner). He was one of the founding members of the Koliba group, taking part in its first exhibition at Frenštát pod Radhoštěm (1914). Notable wartime works include the standard for the Czechoslovak Volunteer Force fighting in Italy, which was a sketch for the painting For Freedom, ceremonially unveiled on 9 April 1917. The painting itself is a monumental work that can be viewed as a reminiscence of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. Featuring four fighters as allegorical symbols of the three Czech provinces plus Slovakia, it became a manifesto for its time, and even after the war it attracted considerable attention. Bartoš’s post-war works are highly esteemed, and Czechoslovakia’s first President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk owned several of his canvases. During the post-war period Bartoš focused on social themes, inspired by the everyday lives of workers in Ostrava and the regional poet Petr Bezruč’s Silesian Songs. These experiences inspired him to create the cycles Bezruč’s Country, Black Land, Strike and Revolution (1920–1921), which rank among his key works. Bartoš viewed the lives of workers in symbolic terms, only distantly depicting actual reality. He had a Romantic notion of the heroic inner core of the worker, free and natural in his own world. This ideological concept is manifested in Bartoš’s artistic vision. If his works on social themes tend towards the heroic, his canvases depicting women and mothers are more intimate and harmonious in their conception.