Jan Pištěk was born on 10 August 1961 in Prague.

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He belongs to an artistic family whose cultural roots reach as far as the late 19th century. In 1980, he graduated from the Václav Hollar Secondary Arts school, then from 1980 to 1986 studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where in 1990 he became an assistant instructor in the painting atelier of Professor Bedřich Dlouhý.
Pištěk belongs to the generation of Czech artists who made their striking debut on the art scene toward the end of the 1980s and, in the following years, determined the developmental course of artwork for several decades after. During the 1990s, he  had a significant connection with Galerie Behémót, where he became one of its main artists. A strong influence on his thought and the future orientation of his work came in the same period through his two trans-Atlantic visits. 

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In 1993, he was selected by an expert committee of American art critics and theorists to attend the international painters’ and sculptors’ symposium Triangle Artists’ Workshop in New York and Pine Plains. For the next year, he received an invitation from a private collector and gallery owner for a study tour of the American West, primarily in Wyoming, and afterward another stipend in New York. With these newly acquired experiences, he ended his teaching engagement at his own request after the 1995–1996 academic year, to concentrate more fully on his independent artwork and other artistic activities. He then took private trips to the Netherlands, France, and Italy alongside residences in Amsterdam, Paris, and Rome.

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In addition to his independent work, he was active intensively from 1997 to 2002 as a costume designer for both film and theatre. With his father Theodor Pištěk, he cooperated on several extensive projects of American productions being filmed in the Czech Republic and highly popular Czech musicals. Independently, he worked on projects for the Forman Brothers’ Theatre on a converted barge, and for the National Theatre.
 

Collections
Národní galerie v Praze, Galerie hlavního města Prahy, Alšova jihočeská galerie v Hluboké nad Vltavou, Kunsthalle Praha, Sbírka statutárního města Ostrava, Zámecká sbírka města Mikulov, Sbírka Karla Babíčka, Sbírka galerie Behémót, COLLETT Prague | Munich manželů Lettenmayerových, Sbírka galerie MAGNA and other local and foreign private collections.

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