He was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 1937. He is one of the most important Slovak sculptors of the second half of the 20th century. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava from 1956 to 1962. In 1990, he joined the academy as a faculty member and served as Rector from 1990 to 1994. He worked as a professor there from 1994 to 2007.

He is the author of monumental works in architecture and the environment. The brutal figural style of his works, the result of an original synthesis of Pop Art, New Figuration and New Realism, culminated in the second half of the 1960s, with his extensive body of work, which earned him wide international recognition. He presented the question of the human body in a derived, inauthentic and deformed form, and through a moral call he managed to metaphorically generalize the existential trauma of the modern man and the current social and political context.

During the normalization period, he was excluded from artistic life. As a result, he actively participated in the unofficial scene with his “small” works (drawings and jewellery). His group of sculptures entitled Obete varujú! (Victims Warn!), a monument to the Slovak National Uprising in Banská Bystrica (1965), was removed during the normalization period, but was erected again in 2004. He was one of the first artists in Slovakia to systematically use computer graphics. In the 1980s, he returned with large and chamber sculptures and reliefs.

He is the author of many public sculptures in Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, France and South Korea.

His works have been presented in several monographic exhibitions and retrospectives at the Slovak National Gallery (1997) and in many world group exhibitions. He exhibited twice at the Venice Biennale (1972 and 1995). He won many prestigious awards and recognitions (Grand Prix at the Danuvius Biennale in Bratislava, 1968, at the Paris Biennale, 1969, Herder Prize, 1983, etc.).

He died in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 2017.

He participated in the Mediterranean Sculpture Symposium on two occasions; 1985 and 1995.