Deaths on October 20

Eva Švankmajerová, Czech painter and poet (b. 1940)

Eva Švankmajerová (September 25, 1940 – October 20, 2005) was a Czech surrealist artist. She was born Eva Dvořáková. A native of the Czech town of Kostelec nad Černými lesy, she moved to Prague in 1958 to study at the Prague School of Interior Design and later the Academy of Performing Arts (Theater Department). From 1970, she was an active member of the Czech and Slovak Surrealist Group. She was a painter and ceramicist, and her poetry and prose regularly appeared in the journal Analogon. Most recently, her work has appeared in English in Surrealist Women: an International Anthology (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998) and Baradla Cave (Twisted Spoon Press, 2001). Švankmajerová was married to the Surrealist filmmaker Jan Švankmajer, with whom she collaborated on such films as Alice, Faust, and Conspirators of Pleasure. They had two children, Veronika and Václav, and lived in Prague until her death from breast cancer in 2005.