Jaroslav Kapec studied at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts from 1951 to 1957 under Vlastimil Rada and Miloslav Holý and in 1958 under Karel Souček. Unlike many of his colleagues and fellow students who remained in the fervour of Prague, Kapec returned to his native Ostrava. Characteristic of the painter’s oeuvre throughout his career was his personal vision of the world and his attachment to the genius loci of the landscape of coal and iron. During the first years after his studies he a clear personal style emerged that he went on to develop into unmistakable formal and intellectual expression and strikingly original legibility. He freed himself from description and entered into the natural relationships of the painting’s structure. He boldly reduced detail with monumentality of expression, whereby he could achieve compositions with complex content and powerful expressive effect. He then proceeded to abandon the spatial illusion. Kapec neutralised the action framework in favour of figural or linear compositional elements. As a result the paintings were the outcome of the artist’s own artistic considerations and very personal vision, characteristic of which was a harmony of black and red.