[1] However, her high artistic culture, the diversity of her work, and her clear inner vision[2] make her a departure from the original definition of art brut, and she figures in this category as a solitaire.

[5] Anna Zemánková was born in Hodolany (today part of Olomouc) into the family of a barber Antonín Veselý and his wife Adolfina as one of four children.

In 1948 the family adopted a daughter Anna and moved to Prague, where Bohumír Zemánek was called to the General Staff of the Czechoslovak Army.

After joining the army, his son Slavomír was transferred to the Technical auxiliary battalion and Bohumír Zemánek was suspended and reassigned to a food warehouse.

As the children grew older and this role began to fade, she experienced a personal crisis, which manifested itself in mood swings and emotional instability.

[7] Friends of her children, including photographers Jan Reich and Jaroslav Krejčí and FAMU student Vlastimil Venclík, came to the Zemáneks' apartment in Dejvice to admire her drawings.

At the age of fifty-two, she started creating "swirling, luminous drawings" which evolved into a "repertoire of abstracted floral and insectlike forms set against flat, softly atmospheric backgrounds.

"[19] In a documentary film made about her in 1969 by Vlastimil Venclík, she appears as a woman of exalted expression and dramatic gestures, who does not doubt her privileged status as an artist or the uniqueness of her talent.

She used mostly A1 and A2 quarters (but eventually also smaller to completely miniature formats) on which, while still in a subdued state of consciousness, she laid out the overall composition, which she later filled in with ornamental details.

[22] Anna Zemánková was constantly experimenting with new materials and trying different methods: paper and textile collage, crochet applications, pasting beads and sequins...

Her initial fascination for faithful depiction of floral motifs was soon replaced by a passion for ever new variations and ideas, and she soon evolved into completely original abstract forms and free improvisation.

The vibrant colours and ornamental articulations of this new paradisiacal flora and fauna, which has its own atectonic laws of growth, correspond to the changing configurations of the hidden games of the imagination and the constant transformations of the flow of psychic events.

Dominant and masculine flowers are in an aggressive position against their feminine counterparts, cloudy hues contrasting with bright pastel colours.

"[26] Motherhood, which played a key role in Anna Zemánek's emotional life, is reflected in her work in paintings that bear the word Birth or Nativity in their title.

In them, organic shapes are combined with intangible bursts of light that recall the haloes of religious images or the transpersonal visions of spiritist mediums.

Against a subtly tinted background, she created floating and hallucinatorily perfect flowers that give a detached impression despite their meticulously executed drawings.

It is easy to overlook the rawness of the gesture and the intense power emanating from the result because of the beauty of the flowers, the rich colors of the cottons, the beads, and the luster of the satin from which she assembled her assemblages.

[29] In the second half of the 1970s, she created textile collages from scraps of satin, which she starched and, after gluing to a paper backing, decorated with ornamental marks using fabric paint, pen, pastel or marker.

Using the same technique she used in her work, Anna Zemánková decorated curtains, upholstery, lampshades or her own hats, thus fulfilling the principle of "bricolage", whereby her living space merged into a (Gesamtkunstwerk).