The focus of sculptor and ceramicist Hana Exnarová’s work is on sculpture, but she also engages in traditional ceramic disciplines such as wheel throwing and painting. Her most frequent theme is nature, especially animals, but she is also interested in the human figure. Her works are characterized by technical mastery, exaggeration and perspective, sometimes even by a dramatic conciseness verging on the comic grotesque.

She is originally from Zlín and studied at the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Uherské Hradiště and in Otto Eckert’s ceramics and porcelain studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. She then worked as a teacher at the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Hradiště and later as the head of the modelling and clothing design department.

In the 1980s and 1990s, she created a number of monumental ceramic works for public spaces, mainly in southeastern Moravia. A specific group of her work is made up of garden sculptures with themes from nature and the animal kingdom for schools and kindergartens.

Together with her husband–the painter and glass artist Jan Exnar–she lives and works in Havlíčkův Brod. Through collaborative projects and parallel artistic work, she gradually began to use other materials, such as glass and stone.

She has been a regular participant in international ceramic symposia in Bechyně and Kunštát in Moravia, as well as in Faenza, Italy, and Munich, Germany. Her works form part of the collections of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, the Aleš South Bohemian Gallery – International Museum of Ceramics in Bechyně, regional galleries in Vysočina, and numerous private collections both in the Czech Republic and abroad.