In the 1980s he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts (1982-1988) and from 1990 to 1993 he worked as an assistant in Jiří Načeradský's Studio of Monumental Art. He began as an expressive painter and was a prominent figure of the 1980s generation of artists. He participated in confrontational exhibitions as a protagonist of wild painting, and tried to map the artistic aspects of the theory of fractals and chaos.

 

Otto Placht began his own solo exhibitions in 1984. In 1993, during an exhibition in Miami, he met the Peruvian shaman Pablo Amaringo, who exhibited paintings of his visions in the same hall. He soon followed him to the town of Pucallpa, located on the very border of the jungle. From then on, he returned frequently, finally settling in the nearby Indian village of San Francisco. Separated from the conveniences of civilization, Otto Placht discovered a new creative energy and began to consciously experiment with the limits of Western art education, which he soon expanded in the spirit of traditional shamanic rituals. He absorbed the magical energy of the jungle, its myths and traditions. In San Francisco, Peru, Otto Placht married a girl from the Shipibo tribe and they had three children together.

 

Since 1993, he has been alternately based in Peru, where he was a visiting professor at the Escuela de Pintura Amazonica in Pucallpa. He has also lectured at Florida International University and the Española Way Art Center in Miami. Otto Placht has exhibited in galleries around the world, and his paintings and work are included in respected national and international art collections, including the Miami MDCC Collection and the National Gallery Prague. In 2005, he founded Taller del arte Transcultural y Amazonico (TATYA) at the Universidad Nacional Intercultural de la Amazonia(UNIA) near Pucallpa, where he served as professor of art until 2010, when he relocated the studio to a private home away from civilization, on the shores of Lake Yarinacocha.