Michael Rittstein

Michael Rittstein was born on 17 September 1949 in Prague. He trained first at the Vaclav Hollar Secondary School of Art in Prague from 1964 to 1968, then studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (AVU) from 1968 to 1974 in the studio of Prof. Arnost Paderlik, graduating in 1974.

He became associated early with a generation of Czech painters working in an expressive, often grotesque figurative idiom, and co-founded the group 12/15 Pozde, ale prece (Late but Still). He is also a member of the Manes Association of Artists. From 2001 to 2018 he served as head of Painting Studio III at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, his own alma mater, and was appointed docent (associate professor) there in 2007 and professor in 2012.

Rittstein continues to live and work between Prague and the town of Brnirov. As of mid-2026, current sources uniformly describe him in the present tense as an active painter, with no obituary, gallery death notice, or major art-press report indicating that he has died.

Rittstein is consistently described in Czech gallery and museum literature as one of the country's most important representatives of expressive figurative painting, prized for a grotesque, exuberant, and often satirical treatment of the human figure. Czech critic Petr Pivoda has characterized his work as an act of revolt against inner constraint, driven by an ostentatious, audacious, and deliberately provocative sensibility in service of the work's polemical aims. That reading of his work as deliberately confrontational recurs across later profiles, which frame his decades at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, his role in the 12/15 group, and his continued institutional exhibition history as evidence of sustained critical and academic authority within Czech art rather than a fixed, settled reputation.

Rittstein's secondary market is active but concentrated in the Czech Republic. According to a market report from Artplus.cz, the painting Spageti di sepia (3 sestry) sold for CZK 1,530,000, which the outlet described as the artist's first solo auction "million" and his record at a domestic Czech auction. The report did not specify the auction house or the exact sale date, and no later or higher public sale has been identified in available sources, so those two details should be treated as unconfirmed rather than absent. A separate review of Czech auction listings found lower, undated results, up to roughly CZK 900,000, for other paintings, and could not independently corroborate the CZK 1,530,000 figure, so it should be treated as provisional pending confirmation from a primary auction record. Before that reported result, Artplus.cz stated that Rittstein's auction benchmark for roughly six years had been the 1984 diptych Mrkuti, which sold for CZK 540,000 at Dorotheum in March 2012; this earlier figure is likewise unconfirmed by independent review. Trafo Gallery states that more than 620 of his works passed through auction over the preceding decade, indicating a market with real depth but modest individual price points relative to his institutional stature.

Rittstein's market runs almost entirely through Czech and Central European auction houses and galleries, and public price data outside that market is thin, so collectors should treat any single result with caution rather than as evidence of a broad international trend. No catalogue raisonne or certificate-of-authenticity program has been identified, which puts extra weight on gallery and institutional provenance, particularly through Kalina Gallery and Trafo Gallery in Prague, both of which currently present his work. Because the exact auction house and date behind his reported record sale are not published in available sources, and an independent check found only lower, undated comparison figures, collectors comparing his top price to other artists should confirm those details directly with the relevant Czech auction archive before relying on them.