Pavel Nešleha was born in Prague on February 19, 1937. He studied at the Art School in Prague’s Vinohrady district (1952–1956) and later at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (1956–1962), in the studio of Professor Alois Fišárek. He went on to become a professor at the Academy (1991) and served as head of the painting studio (1990–2002). He worked across painting, graphics, drawing, object art, and photography. From the beginning, his work was marked by expressivity, virtuoso draftsmanship, a rich creative imagination, and a deep connection to nature and traces of human existence. He was one of the key figures of the 1960s generation and of Czech non-conformist art. In 1987, he co-founded of the Zaostalí group (with Bedřich Dlouhý, Hugo Demartini, Zdeněk Beran, and Jan Klusák) and became a member of the Mánes Union of Fine Arts in 1995. He received numerous international awards for drawing and printmaking, and in 1990 was awarded a creative grant from the Pollock–Krasner Foundation. Since 1967, he held more than thirty solo exhibitions and (beginning in 1965) participated in many important group exhibitions both in the Czech Republic and abroad. His works are represented in numerous Czech and international public and private collections. He died in Prague on September 13, 2003.

Nešleha began working with graphic techniques toward the end of his studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. His early figurative works, reflecting youthful sorrows and skepticism, were characterized by a focus on flatness and sign-like expression. Among these is the Hamlet theme, which attracted him with its sense of hesitation and ambivalence. As he later noted, he soon found in it both his personal means of expression and a mirror held up to the world. He also drew on elements of this theme in his concept for the illustrations in the exhibited graphic offprint. For their execution, he used an original technique he discovered in the early 1960s: creating structures by burning the surfaces of Pertinax plates. Inspired by Vladimír Boudník, whose influence few could resist, he began incorporating the imprints of these burned plates into his graphic work. He was captivated by the transformative quality of matter, evoking the wonder of primordial creation. Through this process, he aligned himself with the Art Informel abstraction movement that emerged from the Konfrontace (Confrontations) studio in 1960, of which he was a member.

The act of burning the plates offered many possibilities for designing illustrations to accompany selected excerpts from Hamlet. The artist could vary the format of the plates freely and refine the resulting structures by scratching, smoothing, or engraving them into figurative signs, ensuring that their visual message resonated with the dramatic plot. The outcome was a unique and remarkable body of work.