Michal Bačák

From the fantastical marquetry of the Forbína bar, through a Hong Kong residence, to porcelain you can take home. Today Bačák is pushing the boundaries of illustration towards architecture, the object and international dialogue.

Bačák draws as if a naturalist, a Baroque stage designer and a child with a bottomless imagination shared one sketchbook. His world is precise, but never sterile. Plants, animals, mythology and small visual paradoxes form an ecosystem of their own. What is most interesting today, however, is that this ecosystem has long since ceased to live only on paper. Bačák lets drawing enter wood, porcelain, glass, interiors and public space — and it is precisely this that is turning the illustrator ever more clearly into a multidisciplinary artist.

Forbína: when illustration becomes architecture

One of the most convincing proofs can be found just a few steps from the National Theatre. The Forbína bar was designed by the Olgoj Chorchoj studio, and its defining authorial element is Bačák's marquetry in rare woods, realised in collaboration with zeitgeist.limited. These are not pictures hung in a finished interior. Here the drawing is part of the architecture — it carries the material, the rhythm of the walls and the atmosphere of the place.

A fox with a horn, an ibis with a drink, a hare with butterfly wings and a bird of paradise playing the clarinet create the poetics of a magical garden. From a distance the composition appears elegant and almost classical; up close it breaks down into small absurdities, stories and visual jokes. This is typical of Bačák: decorativeness is only the first layer, and beneath it another reading awaits.

Marquetry also forced him to change his own hand. He had to translate fine line, hatching and stippling into planes, geometry and the natural figure of veneers. That discipline can be felt in the result. The Czech Academy of Design honoured the project with the title Illustrator of the Year at Czech Grand Design 2024, explicitly describing it as proof that illustration does not end on the page.

Hong Kong 2026: a Czech line enters Asia

In 2026, Bačák's world moved both geographically and materially. He became part of the inaugural Artist-in-Residence programme of WestK Academy in Hong Kong, which brought together Czech and Hong Kong artists and culminated in the exhibition Undercurrents on the island of Ma Wan. The programme worked with themes of nature, sustainability and humanity's relationship with the environment; the exhibition presented more than forty new works.

Here Bačák did not exhibit an “export” of his Prague hand. He responded directly to the place. For the large-format Locus amoenus, he drew on an abandoned house on Ma Wan overgrown with vegetation and wove Hong Kong details into the composition — from a red fire hydrant and Chinese signage to the silhouette of the Tsing Ma Bridge. For another work, he used watercolour on traditional silk and the motif of the bauhinia, the flower associated with Hong Kong's identity. For an artist known above all for drawing, this is a significant shift: the medium no longer determines the result; the story of the place does.

The Hong Kong thread continued with the project Possibilities by ditto ditto / HONG KONG EDIT at the Tai Kwun cultural complex. From 8 to 26 July 2026, Bačák and the Hong Kong illustrator Nicole P. S. Chan created a dialogue between two views of the city — its architecture, its everyday life, its food and the small moments a visitor usually misses. This is exactly where one can see the direction of his work: from illustrating an object to illustration as a way of observing the world.

From a representative object to a gift that is used

Bačák's hand has the rare ability to work on different levels — from a gallery or representative object to something you pick up every morning. Together with the designer Klára Šumová, he created for Křehký the porcelain vase collection Naše květena (Our Flora), conceived as a spatial atlas of stories from the plant world. The vases for sunflowers, peonies, roses or violets are not mere vessels; each particular flower determines their proportions and illustration. According to the Vinorum Book editorial brief, one of the vases also found its way to President Petr Pavel — a fine example of how contemporary Czech design can be representative without ostentation.

For a more accessible way into Bačák's world, the Metamorphoses collection for Artisème is an excellent choice. The porcelain plates draw on Ovid's Metamorphoses and depict the stories of Adonis, Phaethon, Deucalion and Hyacinthus. At first glance they read as strong graphic objects; with longer looking, the individual symbols assemble into a narrative. That is exactly why they work so well at home — they are not a one-off effect, but something that reveals itself gradually.

Vertex glossary / marquetry

A picture or decoration composed of thin layers of materials of different colours or textures, most often wood veneers. The wood is not painted — its natural figure, colour and sheen themselves become the painter's palette.