Pita Wild C.

Pita Wild C.

Biography

Rejecting the conventional life of working for someone else, Pita decided early that she would follow her passion for travel and art.

Pita Wild C. was born in 1981 in Olomouc in Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. She received her master's degree in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Arts of University of Ostrava and studied at the Academy of Art and Design in Bratislava. Pita's artistic journey took her to Oaxaca, but her understanding of light and color has been influenced by her travels. She hitchhiked to the museums and monuments of Europe and drove through the fantastic landscapes of Africa, where she traveled from the Rif Mountains in Morocco to the wetlands of the Gambia; from the sands of the Mauritanian desert to the dunes of Senegal.

After exploring Europe and Africa, in 2008 she flew to America and began exploring the Continent. The United States, Guatemala and Mexico as a whole have their magic, but it is in Oaxaca where she fell in love with the rich culture and artistic renaissance; where the opportunity presented itself and has held her captive since 2012.

Pita's focus during art school was the graphic arts, so it was natural for her to stay in Oaxaca, which hosts more printmaking workshops than almost any other city in the world. As a city of artists, Oaxaca has greatly inspired and influenced Pita's art. With her perfected European technique and her world travels, she brings a unique perspective to the ancient tradition of the Day of the Dead in Mexico in her Son de Muertos series. Pita's engravings of the living dead truly come to life, reflecting the daily life of Oaxacans. If you look closely, you will find the artist self-depicted as the Catrina from her own experiences and memories.

Pita's work captures Oaxaca's favorite holiday so beautifully that the Son Calenda engraving was chosen as the official image for the 2021 Day of the Dead festivities by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture of Oaxaca de Juárez. One of the unique features of this series is Pita’s hand-coloring of a limited selection of original prints, reminiscent of vintage, hand-painted photographs.

As her career takes off, Pita does not languish –she constantly explores to continue experimenting with different techniques, and her themes take on new forms. Not only does she work with engraving, lithography, drypoint and monotype prints, but her most recent work exhibited include oil painting, ceramics, soft sculpture, and stop-motion.