The sculptor, ceramicist and painter Vlasta Dohnalová-Pešanová belongs to the generation of women artists from the First Republic. Her creative practice was closely connected with the Circle of Female Artists, an association that represented and promoted women artists in Czechoslovakia.

She studied at the School of Applied Arts under Josef Drahoňovský and Bohumil Kafka, and also studied painting at Ferdinand Engelmüller’s private school. She focused primarily on ceramic, porcelain and glass sculpture, both in her independent work and in design proposals for Czechoslovak glassworks and ceramics. She designed several monumental works for public spaces, though only the monument to Josefína Havlíčková in Havlíčkův Brod has been preserved.

In all her creative endeavours, she remained faithful to traditional figuration, thematically referring to ancient myths, biblical stories, as well as ethnographic and fairy-tale motifs. She participated in a number of group exhibitions by the Circle of Women Artists; for example, in 1936 in the exhibition Dance in Czechoslovak Fine Art and Photography, organized by the Mánes Association of Fine Artists. She also exhibited regularly as part of the travelling exhibitions “The Nation to Its Artists” during the war years from 1939 to 1942. She presented her designs at the 1925 Applied Arts Exhibition in Paris and at the 1952 Exhibition of Interior Design for Workplaces and Homes at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague.

Her husband was the sculptor Damian Pešan, who worked with Josip Plečnik and Josef Gočár. A close family friend was the painter, graphic artist and amateur mountaineer Otakar Štáfl.