The Defense of the Colored Pencil as an Artistic Medium

Ever since her art school days, Marie Brožová faced the stubborn prejudice that colored pencils were incapable of creating a valuable, high-quality piece of art. When she started hosting her first exhibitions, practically everyone who pretended to intellectualize art turned their nose up at her medium.

At one point, a gallery even canceled a fully booked exhibition the moment they realized the artwork was done with pencils. In that very flash of clarity, it became obvious that the colored pencil desperately needed an attorney.

The First Large-Format Artwork

On the summer solstice of June 21, 2004, Marie Brožová launched The Defense of Colored Pencils right in Prague's Old Town Square. In front of curious passersby, she began drawing her first monumental piece on the largest standard paper size available—A0 (46.8 x 33.1 inches)—titled "The Tree of Life's Ring."

Her goal was to prove that colored pencils don't lag behind traditional "master" techniques in any way. It became the very first of 200 large-format drawings she would go on to create over the next two decades.

Public Drawing Events Across Europe

The Defense of Colored Pencils has traveled to every region of the Czech Republic, making repeated returns to Slovakia and the Netherlands. In 2008, Marie Brožová even took France by storm. She won the top prize at the l'Art au Soleil open-air European artists' symposium in Ferrette, creating her artwork live under the open sky and right before the eyes of the public.

Magic Pencil Gallery

The vast majority of her artwork came to life in her own signature space—the Magic Pencil Gallery. Marie and her husband opened the gallery in 2009 inside the historic Richter House just a few short steps away from Prague's world-famous Astronomical Clock.

The entire twenty-year "illustrated story" of the project culminated in a grand retrospective exhibition at Prague's historic Carolinum (the seat of Charles University) in June 2024. To celebrate this milestone, Marie released a limited-edition book titled "How I Defended the Colored Pencil," documenting two decades of the project through stunning artwork and photographs

“The artistic medium doesn’t matter—what matters is what the artist can create with it.”