Married to an officer in 1933, Anna Zemánková gave up her job as a dental assistant in 1936 after the birth of their second child. In 1948, the family moved to Prague. During the 1950s, Anna Zemánková fell into depression and, suffering from diabetes, had both legs amputated.

In her fifties, she began to paint, draw, and create collages of organic figures, animals, plants, minerals, clusters of hybrid fruits, and reconstructed bodies. She used a wide range of techniques: pastels and pen and ballpoint pen drawings, perforation of the surface, embossed drawings pressed onto handmade rag paper, and painting on silk or satin.

Following an unchanging ritual, she drew every morning between four and seven o'clock. Her work was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2013, it is featured in all the major collections of outsider art as well as in the Collection de l'Art Brut, the LaM, at the Centre Pompidou.