Josef Moravec is considered one of the top fossil paleoartists in the world today. Moravec, who currently resides in the Czech Repubic, has been invited to museums in Europe and United States to illustrate pre-historic animals based upon few skeletal remains. His mastery and dedication of recreating detailed prehistoric animals has been recognized and used by the Museum of Natural History in Prague.Moravec began drawing dinosaurs in childhood. He had intense love for untouched nature, and his extraordinary artistic talent guided him to draw massive beasts that no human eyes have seen before. Moravec created his first oil painting at the age of 10. At the age of 14, his paintings were winning awards and grants for his school, located in his birthplace and hometown of Pilsen. Moravec studied under the founders of fossil iconography. He took the vision and the ideas of the founders and added detail, life and precision. He was influenced most by a world-known Czech painter Zdenek Burian.
Because of his strong democratic ideologies in a former communistic Czechoslovakia, Moravec was denied by the government in sharing his brilliant works and studies outside the country. Moravec's captivating oil paintings depict dinosaurs and ocean dwellers that were Earth's first owners. His renderings allow scientists, students and everyone the ability to travel and see in great detail a scene from the Cambrian Era ( 550 Million year ago) to the Pleistocene Period ( 25,000 years ago.)
He currently works as an independent paleontologist and contributes studies on Trilobites ( which lived 550 million years ago ) in the Barrandian Zone, near Prague, and other sites all over the Czech Republic for the country's Natural History Museums.
In 1995, Moravec founded Prehistoric World Images® with his brother, Miroslav, who lives in California. Their mission is to support education and heighten the awareness of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.
To find out about where Josef's paintings have been exhibited, visit the
traveling exhibit page