lit a candle 9 Sept 2026My mum had all his Bobří stopou covers. She kept them in a box. Just told her he's gone.
Their story
Libor Balák was a Czech painter and illustrator who treated prehistoric reconstruction as a job of evidence, not a mood. He was born in Brno on 10 February 1961, then Czechoslovakia. As a boy he walked to school past the Moravian Museum and imagined a room of specialists arguing over…
Libor Balák was a Czech painter and illustrator who treated prehistoric reconstruction as a job of evidence, not a mood. He was born in Brno on 10 February 1961, then Czechoslovakia. As a boy he walked to school past the Moravian Museum and imagined a room of specialists arguing over how a particular prehistoric person had looked and what they had used. When he later went inside, he found that no one on those desks was doing the work professionally and systematically. Every reconstructor, he said, started from zero, and the same beginner mistakes kept returning. That disappointment became his programme.
This page is for that Brno painter, illustrator, draughtsman, comic author, and teacher of prehistoric reconstruction. It is not a profile for the principal of Karlovarské hudební divadlo and Divadlo Dětí in Karlovy Vary, another public Libor Balák. Theatre contact pages, theatre quotations, and divadlo search results belong to that other person. They are not used here.
During studies at the Brno secondary school of applied arts (Střední uměleckoprůmyslová škola) he sat in on private lectures in ethnography and anthropology with the anthropologist Jan Jelínek. He consulted prehistoric reconstructions with the paleobotanist Antonín Hluštík, who tried to push him toward a visual language of his own rather than a copy of Zdeněk Burian. In a 13 September 2009 Český rozhlas Sever interview he dated his engagement with prehistory to about age 14 or 16. Burian was the fascination of that generation. CNN Prima and colleagues described Balák as Burian's pupil and as a continuer of the Burian line in Czech paleoart. He was also clear that Hluštík had driven him away from Burian's manner. The inheritance was the subject, not the brushstroke. Czech Wikipedia also records collaboration with the anthropologist Josef Wolf.
After school he joined, in 1980, the geological and paleontological department of the Moravian Museum in Brno. He taught at a people's art school (Lidová škola umění) from 1985 to 1987, and from 2004 he taught at secondary school. Czech Wikipedia also records him as an art teacher at Základní škola Janouškova in Brno. A workshop note from ZŠ UNESCO describes him as a visiting painter, illustrator, comic author, computer-game artist, and art teacher, and as a pupil of Burian, leading pupils through a lecture on how illustrators approach reality and then a portrait of a hussar built from skeletal analysis.
From about 2010 he worked with the game studios Pterodon and Illusion Softworks, making drawn animation for 2D and 3D games, including Vietcong. Czech Wikipedia marks that collaboration with a source caveat. It is reported here as Wikipedia states it, not as a credited in-game title page verified for this profile. The larger public record is books and pictures. He illustrated adventure fiction that Czech readers already knew by heart: a long run of Karel May, including the multi-volume Cesta za štěstím and Ztracený syn, plus Černý mustang, Duch Llana Estacada, and others; covers and jackets for Zane Grey, Max Brand, and the Nobody series; Frederick Marryat's Bludný Holanďan and Syn pirátův; Thomas Mayne-Reid's Bezhlavý jezdec; Leon Garfield's Ďábel se skrývá v mlze. For the Foglar world he made covers for the magazine Bobří stopou, further Foglar-circle illustrations, and beaver-scout cards that in 2025 were reprinted on a poster for the 35th anniversary of Sdružení přátel Jaroslava Foglara (SPJF). At the association's November 2025 general meeting he collected an honorary recognition in person and greeted members. The Foglar memorial later called that one of his last meetings with them.
His own books include Dobrodružství s Bobří stopou (2003) and Moje první kniha o pravěku (2008), a board-book look at prehistoric life. A 2006 teaching text, Úvod do rekonstrukční paleoetnologie, published under his own name with a Tišnov imprint, set out methods, types of reconstruction, and the psychological traps that distort how a researcher pictures an extinct culture. On the web he built Antropark, a picture gallery of ancient cultures, plus a children's version, a Paleolithic image gallery, and paleoethnology essays. Český rozhlas in 2009 located the adult gallery on the site of the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Brno, Paleolithic and paleoethnology section, and noted that Antropark had then marked about ten years. Many of those pages are now archived. The old anthropark.wz.cz address is not listed here as a live official homepage. The children's Antropark is credited in the Czech web archive as a Libor Balák project with illustrations by Zuzana Baláková. Sources consulted do not state whether she was a relative. No marriage or household is inferred from the shared surname.
The method, as he described it on the radio, was slow on purpose. A reconstruction was the point at which archaeology and paleontology either took flight or stayed as fuel on the pad. Without pictures, he said, the public could not see what it was paying for, and even students could pass an exam and still have only paper. He wanted a workshop and a continuity of method, not a genius performance. He said he was not doing anything world-shaking. He was continuing the French artist Forestier and Karel Absolon's 1925 work on the legendary Moravian mammoth hunters, and, for the older Paleolithic, work from the 1950s and 1970s. Almost nothing, he argued, was finished. A single watercolor might take half a year, the preparation several years, piles of site reports, photographs, sections, and sketches. He preferred finds with high information value even if they came from an unfashionable village, then assembled them until a camp could be pictured. He joked that he had once called out that Burian was going out of date and should be given the job, and that he now called the same about Balák. He gave up free painting. Antropark, once the Paleolithic opened into Celts, Neolithic, and Eneolithic, plus language versions and the need to repair old pictures, was work for a whole institute, not one person.
A 2026 memorial note says he lived in Tišnov from childhood and delivered illustrations by bicycle. Birth place remains Brno. No street address is stated, and none is invented. An English reference video title styles him Mgr. Libor Balák, MSc. That form is not independently verified here as a degree record, so the display name stays Libor Balák.
Late uploads on his own YouTube channel continued that teaching voice: Sungir as a revolutionary archaeological grave, the growth of the human brain and the construction of the skull, a short note on the book Umění v zrcadle věků, and a new book on mammoth hunters beside another volume on prehistoric animals in preparation. An XTV interview carried his line that people in prehistory were more self-reliant and creative, and that they hunted mammoths for the winter.
He died at 65 after a stroke. CNN Prima NEWS, citing colleague anthropologist Roman Bortel on 4 September 2026, said a vessel burst, a massive brain bleed followed, and he spent the last two weeks in a coma, at a moment when he was full of ideas and ready to walk into further work. No hospital, city of death, funeral place, spouse, or children are named in the sources used here. SPJF announced the death on Facebook in early September. The first public wording, quoted by CNN Prima, put the day at 1 September 2026. A Foglar memorial page on galerie.bohousek.cz, updated 6 September 2026, corrected that date to 2 September 2026. English Wikipedia's Deaths in September 2026 list and the Czech Wikipedia death field also place him on 2 September 2026. This profile uses 2 September 2026 and keeps the earlier 1 September wording visible, so the two reports are not collapsed into one unstated day.
What is named, instead of a household, is the work: May and Foglar on the shelf, mammoth-hunter camps on the wall, and a stubborn argument that prehistory stays dead unless someone is willing to draw it from the finds rather than from a mood.
Biography adapted from Czech Wikipedia; CNN Prima NEWS, 4 Sep 2026; galerie.bohousek.cz, 6 Sep 2026; Cesky rozhlas Sever, 13 Sep 2009.. Wikipedia ↗
In their own words
“Lidé v pravěku byli samostatnější a kreativnější. Na zimu si ulovili mamuty.”
Title card of the XTV interview with Libor Balák, the paleo-illustrator. YouTube watch page https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWKkRmxD6u8. Not the Karlovy Vary theatre namesake.
“Pravěk už od nějakých 14 - 16 let. Mě to vždycky bavilo a snažil jsem se, abych se tomu mohl věnovat co nejblíže profesně, tak jsem po umělecké průmyslovce šel pracovat do muzea na paleontologii.”
Libor Balák, Český rozhlas Sever, Rekonstrukce: Nový život pravěku, 13 September 2009. Published transcript on sever.rozhlas.cz.
“Když nebudou rekonstrukce, tak laik nebude vůbec vědět, na co dává peníze.”
Libor Balák, same 2009 Český rozhlas Sever interview. In the surrounding passage he compared unpublished research to a rocket that has fuel and electronics but never flies.
“Já nedělám nic světoborného, já v podstatě navazuji u těch našich legendárních lovců mamutů na práci francouzského výtvarníka Forestiera, na Karla Absolona z roku 1925.”
Libor Balák, Český rozhlas Sever, 13 September 2009, on continuing Forestier and Karel Absolon rather than claiming a world-shaking method.
“Tak, jak jsem kdysi volal: "Burian zastarává, dejte mi to, já to budu malovat," tak dneska volám: "Balák zastarává, dejte mi to, budu dělat nové obrázky!"”
Libor Balák, Český rozhlas Sever, 13 September 2009. Published transcript. The short shout Balák zastarává, dejte mi to, budu dělat nové obrázky! sits inside this sentence.
“Nedělám žádnou volnou tvorbu, už jsem se toho vzdal.”
Libor Balák, Český rozhlas Sever, 13 September 2009, on giving up free painting because Antropark took all available time.
“To je práce pro celý ústav, ne pro jednoho člověka samozřejmě.”
Libor Balák, Český rozhlas Sever, 13 September 2009, on Antropark once Paleolithic work opened into Celts, Neolithic, Eneolithic, language versions, and repairs.
“Nervová cévka mu praskla zrovna v době, kdy měl plno nápadů na budoucí práci a pln entuziasmu se chystal kráčet do budoucnosti.”
Roman Bortel, colleague anthropologist, quoted by CNN Prima NEWS (Michaela Bartošová), 4 September 2026. Reported speech about Balák's death, not Balák's own words.
Photos
2Libor Balák, Czech painter and paleoanthropology popularizer, with a human skull, a profile drawing, and bones laid out on a table. CNN Prima NEWS obituary photograph. This is the Brno painter and paleo-illustrator, not the Karlovy Vary theatre principal.
by People Forever
Libor Balák in a gallery of mammoth-hunter and shamanism reconstructions, holding a large blue-toned camp picture. Panels include LOVCI MAMUTŮ and ŠAMANISMUS. Same CNN Prima NEWS obituary gallery as the portrait. This is the paleo-illustrator, not the theatre namesake.
by People Forever
Those covers are keepsakes now. Your mum has something precious.