The sculptor and ceramist Karel Hyliš spent his entire life in Havlíčkův Brod in the Vysočina region, but his theoretical and artistic work transcended the boundaries of the region, thanks in part to his role as a university lecturer and member of the committee of the Union of Czech Visual Artists in Hradec Králové, and the commission for cooperation between artists and architects.

He studied at the State Technical School of Ceramics in Bechyně and at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague under Professor Otto Eckert. From 1960, he taught at the Pedagogical Institute in Jihlava, and in 1965 he moved to the Faculty of Education in České Budějovice, where he was appointed senior lecturer in 1978, and professor of sculpture in 1988. He taught modelling and artistic design at the Department of Art Education until the mid-1990s.

He devoted himself to sculpture in stone, wood and ceramics, as well as medal making and charcoal drawing. His main themes were portraits and the human figure, which he simplified and stylized to the point of archetypal representation. In the 1960s, he temporarily turned to abstraction and alternative materials, but later returned to figurative art. During the 1970s and 1980s, he created a number of works of art for public spaces in towns in eastern Bohemia and the Vysočina region. Among them, the most artistically powerful are the figural objects made of stone.

His work was mainly exhibited in the Vysočina region, but he also participated in a number of collective exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad. He was a member of the Brno ’57 group, which featured at several major presentations of young artists of the 1960s. His work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery in Prague and a number of galleries in eastern and southern Bohemia and the Vysočina region.