Kája Saudek was a legend of Czech comics

Prague - Kája Saudek, who passed away after nine years in a coma, is one of the most prominent figures in Czech visual art of the last decades. His unmistakable style made him the uncrowned king of Czech comics: firm, dynamic lines, exaggeration, ironic distance, erotica, and distinctive humor. Together with his twin brother, the world-famous photographer Jan Saudek, they formed a unique artistic brotherly duo unparalleled in Czech culture.
    The Saudek brothers were born on May 13, 1935, in Prague to a family of a bank clerk. At the end of the war, due to their Jewish origins, they ended up in a special concentration camp for twins. They escaped with their lives by sheer coincidence and survived the war and the horrors of the Holocaust.
    From an early age, the Saudeks were introduced to American comics through relatives, which significantly influenced the fate of both brothers, especially Kája's. Because he could not study, he became a technical draftsman and stagehand in the Barrandov film studios. In the 1960s, he began painting comics, which were also featured on the big screen - in 1966, his drawings were used by Miloš Macourek in the film Who Wants to Kill Jessie?, and four years later by Oldřich Lipský in the film Four Murders are Enough, Darling.
    Kája Saudek was not only an exceptional illustrator but also a "lettrist," or letter painter. In the second half of the 1960s, he began experimenting in the field of typography. The typefaces he used in the magazine Pop Music Express reflected, among other things, the psychedelia associated with the big beat culture and hippies.
    His most infamous work is the comic Muriel and Angels from 1969, which was declared the best Czech comic of all time six years ago. In this case, Kája Saudek used his favorite method of painting his heroes based on real people. Muriel was given the face and charms of actress Olga Schoberová, while the main antagonist, General Xeron, was created based on his brother Jan. However, at the time of its creation, Muriel and Angels did not make it to publication in full, and the originals of the work were long considered lost. Fans of comic stories could only know the first part of Muriel from lower quality reproductions until last year when Albatros Publishing released the comic in all its glory. In December 2009, a restored sequel titled Muriel and the Orange Death was released.
    Kája Saudek also drew a number of other comics that have become part of Czech legend. In the first half of the 1970s, some were published in the magazine Mladý svět (Lips Tullian, Black Filip), but later they could only see the light of day in a semi-secret manner in a speleological magazine (The Secret of the Golden Horse, In the Footsteps of the Snow Man, Peruvian Diary, or Arnal and Two Dragon Teeth).
    After November 1989, he got a new chance to showcase his art, but according to critics, his newer works generally did not reach the quality of previous years. Practically all of Saudek's older comics were also re-released, sometimes only thanks to meticulous searches for the original manuscripts, which had come into the hands of various owners over the years.
    The life of the famous comic book illustrator – similar to that of his brother Jan – was marked by several women, but he married only once. He has a daughter, Berenika, a painter, with his wife Johana.
    In April 2006, he fell into a coma after a piece of food got stuck in his throat. Since then, he was confined to a bed in the Motol hospital, where his wife and other relatives regularly visited him.