Vaclav Vytlacil, the son of Czech immigrants, was born in New York on November 1, 1892. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1906, and in 1913, he earned a scholarship to study at the Art Student League in New York under the direction of Luminist painter John C. Johansen and Realist Anders Zorn.

Vytlacil accepted a teaching position at the Minneapolis School of Art in 1916, remaining there until 1921. This enabled him to travel to Europe to study Cézanne’s paintings and works of the Old Masters. He traveled to Paris, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, and Munich seeking the works of Titian, Cranach, Rembrandt, Veronese, and Holbein, which gave him new perspective. Vytlacil studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Munich, settling there in 1921. Fellow students were Ernest Thurn and Worth Ryder, who introduced him to famous abstractionist Hans Hofmann. He worked with Hofmann from 1922 to 1926, first as a student and subsequently as a teaching assistant. With Thurn, he organized Hofmann’s 1924 summer school on the island of Capri. Hoffman provided wisdom and guidance for the young artists struggling with the challenges of the post-Cezanne era in painting. Over the years that Vytlacil remained in Munich, the travels and discussions that he shared with Hoffman would prove to be monumentally influential in his artistic career.

On August 18, 1927, Vytlacil married Elizabeth Foster in Florence. They returned to the United States during the summer of 1928 when Ryder, a professor at Berkeley, asked him to teach a course called The Modern Painting and Sculpture of Europe. After one year, they went back to Europe and Vytlacil spent about six years studying the works of Matisse, Picasso, and Dufy. They returned to the States permanently in 1935, when Vytlacil began to teach at the Florence Cane School in Rockefeller Center, New York City. Throughout his life, Vytlacil would also teach at the Art Student League, Black Mountain College, Queens College, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Cy Twombly, James Rosenquist, Robert Rauschenberg, Tony Smith, and Louise Bourgeous were among his many students.

In 1936, Elizabeth Vytlacil gave birth to their only child Anne, and Vaclav co-founded the American Abstract Artists Group with Arshille Gorky, Byron Browne, and William De Kooning. He was an active participant for many years and proved to be a strong voice in the emerging era of American Modernism. He was also a member of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. In search of a change in environment, he purchased a home on the Martha’s Vineyard. The island’s seascapes inspired an oceanic theme in much of his later work.

Vaclav Vytlacil died on Thursday, January 5th, 1984 in New York at the age of 91. In 1996, Anne Vytlacil Williams bequeathed his house and studio in Sparkhill, New York to the Art Students League, which in turn founded the Vytlacil School of Painting and Sculpture. The school offers high caliber, yet affordable classes to many of the city’s artistic residents.