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Josef Skupa was a leading avant-garde artist and puppet player with a background in visual arts and scenography. The article documents his life from his early cabaret experiments in Prague and his scenographic designs in Pilsen, through the innovative activities of his theatre company, to his international acclaim (which lasted from the late 1920s to the 1950s). The origin of Skupa's famous puppet double act: Spejbl and Hurvínek is addressed, alongside an account of the development of the puppets as artefacts and as dramatic characters that defined a key era of Czech puppet theatre and established a style known throughout Europe as 'The Skupa School'.