Hanuš Folkmann was a cosmopolitan artist, drawing inspiration from the culturally interconnected Europe of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His career was closely tied to his family background—both the one he grew up in and the one he married into. His father, Alois Folkmann, was also a sculptor. His wife, Božena née Birnbaumová, was the niece of sculptor Bohuslav Schnirch and the sister of art historian Vojtěch Birnbaum.

He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague under Josef Václav Myslbek, assisting him with the finishing touches to the St Wenceslas Monument on Wenceslas Square. After 1900, he continued his studies in Munich and Paris, and he worked and exhibited in Frankfurt, Berlin, and Vienna.

After returning to Prague, he devoted himself to decorative, funerary, figurative and portrait sculpture, primarily in bronze and stone. He worked with his father on the decorative work for Prague’s Wilson Station. Together with the painter and puppeteer Ota Bubeníček, sculptor and medallist Ladislav Šaloun, and other artists and teachers from the association Umělecká výchova, he founded a puppet theatre in the Prague district of Vinohrady which aimed to provide children with an aesthetic education. He also ran the Folkmann Puppet Theatre in a department store on Vodičkova street and illustrated several children’s books.

His teaching talents later found expression as a professor of modelling at the Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague, where he organized study trips and annual exhibitions for students.

His only work in Havlíčkův Brod, the sandstone group Conquering the Potato, was created for the building of the Potato Research Institute by the Prague architect and native of Tábor, Theodor Petřík.