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| Leokadia Makarska-Cermak posing with a commissioned portrait. |
Leokadia Makarska-Cermak is the artistic name of Leokadia Cermakova. She is an architect and a European artist, who has exhibited
her paintings widely in Europe and the United States. When residing in the Czech Republic, she first worked as an architect,
and then taught architecture of interiors. Throughout that time, she was also a certified expert examiner of furniture and
artistic restorations of interiors. While in the United States, Makarska-Cermak has been working since 1998 as the sole curator
and in-house artist of the Grand Prospect Hall, a nineteenth century landmark in Brooklyn, where she has been providing artistic
restoration of the Victorian interiors, including gilding, painting, sculpturing and antique furniture. She creates her own
original artwork and sets up art exhibits. Her experience as an artist, architect, and appraiser has given her detailed and
precise sense for decorative art, everlasting symbols, and portraits.
Makarska-Cermak's list of honors includes presentations of portraits to such public figures as New York City Mayor and
Presidential Candidate Rudolph Giuliani in 1998, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer in 2001, and Founder and Executive Director of
the Congress of Italian-Americans Organization, Inc., Mary C. Sansone in 2007. Makarska-Cermak painted commissioned portraits
of the former Czech president Vaclav Havel, Mother Theresa, Pope John Paul II and other notables. She received a full scholarship
from the Polish Ministry of Culture to study abroad. Additionally, she received numerous Art Expo Interior Design and Furniture
awards. Moreover, Makarska-Cermak's work has been featured on TV programs in Poland, namely TVP Wroclaw's "Fakty";
and "Weekend Z" and also in the New York area, on Polish Polsat News WNYE and Studio 3 Polish-American television.
She was invited to talk to Radio ZET in Wroclaw, Poland and also to Polish Radio Rytm in New York as a solo guest of program
"Sztukomania". Clips from some of these programs are posted on YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/LeokadiaMC.
Leokadia Makarska-Cermak (as Leokadia Cermakova) received her Bachelor of Arts with Cum Laude honors from the Bernard
M. Baruch College of the City University of New York in the United States, her Master's Degree from the Thomas G. Masaryk
College of the Czech Technical University (CVUT) in Prague, and her Master's Degree in Architecture of Interiors and Furniture
design from Technical University in Zvolen in former Czechoslovakia. In addition, Makarska-Cermak pursued five years of independent
studies in drawing, painting, and sculpturing in the Czech Republic, Italy and the United States. While in Italy, 1995-1996,
she studied in Bologna under such distinguished Professors as Francesco Brunetti, Demetrio Casile, and Nino Noce.
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