Iva Hladis was born in the Czech Republic in 1965. Her exposure 
to fine art began early in life: both her father and mother were 
fine art painters. At fifteen, she became associated with  
“Charter 77 “, an underground political group that championed 
the human rights of the then Russian occupied Czechoslovakia. 
This involvement resulted in her first serious works: a series 
of dark, emotional paintings of figures over restive backgrounds, 
paintings portraying the hopelessness and frustration of living 
under a repressive regime.

Two principal artistic influences on the budding young talent 
were Josef Sima and Jan Zrzavy. As with Sima’s vaguely 
identifiable objects and Zrzavy’s dark world of the fantastic, 
her paintings emerged as resolutely in the school of Czech 
Modernism, her art in it’s almost violent emotionalism, 
carrying on the story of loss told in Czech art throughout the 
twentieth century.

In the summer of 1985 Iva escaped Czechoslovakia and made her 
home in Rome, Italy. A year later she was granted political 
asylum in the United States. The refugee life of a free, 
young woman in a strange and exciting new land thus supplanted 
her previous life of struggle against hardline political 
repression. Consequently, her painting changed: abstracted 
figures dominated and an intense symbolism was employed.

By 1988 she began working as a painter for Robert Walker. He 
introduced her to the Los Angeles art scene and helped establish 
her place within the art community. During the ‘88-’89 school 
year, she also worked as an assistant in a drawing class at 
West Los Angeles College, where she studied at the time.

In the fall of 1989, the sudden exhilaration unleashed in 
Czechoslovakia, by the Velvet Revolution and the end of communist 
rule, created a reverse effect on her paintings and a return to 
the old dissident themes she thought were left behind. The 
reunion with her mother, shortly after, inspired a series of 
works filled with injustice and despair.  It was this body of 
work that earned Iva a first exhibit at LACMA’s rental  division.

In her more recent paintings, the abstraction has faded and the 
figures are recognizably human. A new world is revealed in which 
communication thrives. With freedom comes a new level of 
introspection, emotion closer to the heart. The work becomes a 
universal language shared by many.

Currently, Iva continues to work and live in Los Angeles.