A neo-impressionist painter and sculptor, he was born on June 4, 1912 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as the son of Peter and Mary Kucera, who emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1906. In the late 1920s the family lived in Russia, where the exposure to museums, fine art and culture nurtured his artistic talents as a teenager. Kucera earned a scholarship in painting and sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania; in 1933 he left the Academy to pursue a freelance career in Philadelphia. He joined other avant-garde artists and gained national recognition for his public murals, dioramas and oil paintings. Kucera served as an adjunct professor of art at Temple University, and exhibited his work in numerous shows.
He served in the US Army from 1940 to 1945, as an engineer, medical corpsman and medical illustrator. After the war, Kucera moved back to Philadelphia, to continue his career in art, and in 1952, he moved his family to the Eastern Shore of Virginia, pursuing his painting, sculpture, carving, carpentry, winemaking, and antique restoration.
From 1952 to 1982, Kucera completed diorama installations at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the State Museum of Pennsylvania, and the Natural History Museum of Santo Domingo, working from homes in Harrisburg, Annapolis, the Bahamas and Maine. In 1993, he moved to Wake, Virginia, to continue sculpting and painting, and later he and his second wife renovated a 1887 historic farmhouse, with a new studio and a sculpture garden.
John P. Kucera died on August 22, 2006 at age 94 of congestive heart failure.
Source:
Obituary, submitted by N. Lee Stevens, Senior Curator Art Collections, The State Museum of Pennsylvania
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