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At the first-anniversary party for Jo's Bar in 1993, Georgia Schaller’s painting of the bar’s regulars and staff hung on the wall. By the end of the night, it was splattered with wine and champagne. Schaller told the owner of the painting, Jo-Anne Emery, not to clean it. The stains, she said, brought the painting to life.

That was Prague’s expat art scene in a nutshell. Art was everywhere, and nobody treated it too preciously. You saw it on the cover of a newspaper or magazine, on the walls of a favorite bar, club or café, on a poster tacked to the side of a building, even on a flyer someone pressed into your hand. The pages of Prognosis and The Prague Post were stuffed with original cartoons and illustrations. Pick up a copy of Pozor, Optimism, the Jáma Revue, or any one of a dozen other literary journals, and you’d find sketches and drawings on seemingly half the pages. And lots of them were pretty good.

Art was so much a part of the scenery that we scarcely noticed it as art. It was as familiar as the tables and menus of the cafés and bars where we spent our time. Only now, more than thirty years later, can I appreciate how much the artists among us shaped the way we saw the city and ourselves.

Much of that art came from young foreigners who arrived after the Velvet Revolution. They were drawn to Prague by historic change, the low cost of living, and the sense that anything was possible.

In this three-part series, I'll explore the art and artists that shaped the look and feel of expatriate Prague. Part 1 below examines how art found its way into everyday life, while Parts 2 and 3, appearing over the next two weeks, will focus more on the artists themselves -- first the cartoonists and illustrators, then the painters and other visual artists -- and the places that showcased their work.