Modern and contemporary Czech art/Sculpture

by Antonín Matějček

II

SCULPTURE

By ANTONÍN MATĚJČEK

MODERN Czech sculpture had even more difficulty in coming to birth than modern Czech painting. During the first half of the nineteenth century there was no monumental statuary of any kind either in Prague or in the provinces, and the craft of stone-carving was only kept up here and there in a very limited measure.

There is nothing that characterises the weakening of plastic perception more clearly than the works of Václav Prachner. The sole representative of Empire sculpture in Bohemia, Prachner does not create, but is content to reproduce the frigid forms of Bergler’s designs. Here the sculptor is merely the interpreter of a piece of drawing, the faithful exponent of the artist’s conception. Yet his works testify that this dependence had not been forced upon him. They are only of interest in as far as they represent the design. Memorial stones occupied the first place in his works; they remain the sole manifestation of plastic art in Bohemia during the first half of the century. Towards 1850 the imperfection of sculptural art became evident; the more important work was entrusted to foreigners.

It is significant of the age that a patron of art who wished to commemorate the glorious past of Bohemia by a monumental edifice after the pattern of the Walhalla at Regensburg, was obliged to order at Munich, from Schwanthaler’s studio, the sculptural portion of his Slavín. The native sculptors were mere artisans, engaged on trifling, casual orders scarcely flattering either to their ambition or to their pride. About the middle of the century two Germans, the brothers Max, attained the first place among sculptors in Bohemia. A few monuments and statues serving to decorate the Charles Bridge in Prague were the uninspired products of this barren epoch.

But already, while these two Germans were enjoying their ill-deserved renown, the first Czech sculptor, Václav Levý, a self-taught artist, was hewing from the sandstone rocks of the picturesque Liběchov, groups and isolated figures drawn from Czech history and folklore. A romantic temperament, violent and still undisciplined, is here seen struggling towards self-expression, boldly shaping the material under the impulse of a powerful instinct for plasticity. He was afterwards sent to study under Schwanthaler at Munich; he returned as a mature artist in 1848, yet obtained no orders in Prague. Accordingly he left there his masterpiece, “Adam and Eve,” and—as a travelling scholarship afforded him the means of living abroad—betook himself to Rome, drawn to that city by his pious leanings. He remained there for many years, joining that group of Catholic-minded artists known as “Nazarenes,” whose ascetic conception of art was soon to sap the healthy instincts of his youth.

The next generation could hardly, in the nature of things, produce any men of real talent. The academic idealism of the preceding period burdened it with a heavier load than it had the courage to shake off. It was mainly for churches and cemeteries that sculptors were called upon to work, but even when they received orders that demanded a closer contact with realities, they were unable to abandon the conventional and the trite. They were eclectics out of touch with real life, invertebrates lacking in the will to create. Antonín Wagner, a persevering worker who finally surmounted the obstacles that beset him, alone contrived to raise himself above their level. Although living in Vienna, he took part in the construction of the monuments which had gradually been undertaken in his native country, such as the decoration of the National Theatre on the right bank of the Vltava or that of the Bohemian Museum which overlooks the Wenceslaus Square (Václavské náměstí). For the Theatre he provided two figures of legendary Czech bards and the group representing the Judgment of Libuše, and for the staircase of the museum a vigorous allegory of the Czechoslovak country. His productions already mirror, to a remarkable degree, the tendencies of modern sculpture. Himself one of the Viennese Italianizers, he derived inspiration from the Italian Renaissance at its flowering-time, keeping close to Nature even in his allegories, and seeing in the model no longer a mere intermediary, but an essential basis for the forms to be produced.

Wagner, however, was not equal to the task of breathing new life into Bohemian sculpture. Nor was his junior, Bohuslav Schnirch, although he received an exceedingly thorough training. Moulded in Italy, in the school of the Renaissance, he acquired a love for its classic form, and, like the great Italian masters, managed to subordinate his art to the ideas and requirements of the architect. His friend Josef Zítek, architect of the Prague National Theatre, could not have found a more loyal collaborator: and indeed, there is no point either in the exterior or in the interior of the Theatre where the sculptor has been at cross-purposes with the architect, so admirably do Schnirch’s decorations in high relief and bas-relief figures and ornaments harmonize with the rest. Below the roof, Apollo and the Muses gracefully carry on the rhythm of the façade, the allegorical figures placed on the pediment of the stage-boxes are in a calm, seemly attitude, and in carving the powerful Victories which he projected for the tall lateral pylons of the façade, he has only lengthened the reins of the horses just so far as the frame allowed. Accordingly the architect entrusted him with almost the whole sculptural and ornamental decoration of the building, the cornices and corbels, friezes, wreaths and disks, a rich store of Renaissance forms tastefully disposed and combined. Subsequently, Schnirch took part in nearly all the erections of a monumental character that were being set up in Prague during this period of revival. But the discipline he put upon himself—voluntarily at first—in order to remain subordinate to the architect, in the end cramped his style as a sculptor even where he should have asserted his creative freedom. Thus his large equestrian statue of King George of Poděbrad is, as it were, the frigid paradigm of a stiff rider on a lifeless horse, and his portraits, void of inner warmth, seem as cold as masks. A sort of screen had interposed itself between him and reality, forbidding him to see clearly and feel naturally. He made up for his lack of feeling by an excess of intellectuality, and his work suffers accordingly. Once, and once only, he startled the public by a work replete with glowing life, when he nearly defeated a youthful rival in the open competition for the St. Wenceslaus monument. The issue was long in doubt, but finally the younger man won the day, and we can now see that Schnirch, despite himself, had come under the ascendancy of his successful rival, and owed to him whatever was meritorious in his plan.

This rival, Josef Václav Myslbek, was at last to give Czech sculpture what it had hitherto lacked, the inspiring example of a real creative effort. He is the first in Bohemia whose art is free from all academic influence, and borrows nothing from the antique or the Renaissance. From Levý, whose pupil he was for a short time, he received nothing but the preliminary encouragement to sincere and unremitting labour. He was not one to spend much time and trouble in looking for models to follow. It was by virtue of his native genius that he achieved an original outlook on Nature and human life. Hence he was the first in our country to understand and render the language of Nature, and to prove that sculpture is no mere journeyman’s task, but the outcome of artistic inspiration, drawn from the very depths of man’s soul. A fervent admirer of Josef Mánes, he accepted his influence as a moral obligation. Mánes’ sensuousness and deep racial and national feeling awakened in him a new, rich life. Accordingly he frankly enlisted in that band of painters who had proclaimed the late Mánes as their leader, and whom the accident of collaboration at the Prague National Theatre had brought together, whence the name “National Theatre School” was applied to them. Myslbek’s four groups on the pylons of the Palacký bridge in Prague appear on the one hand as a sequel to the decoration of the National Theatre, and on the other as a sculptural realization of Mánes’ ideals. Under his hand, the material is invested with glowing life, the old legends assume a new and original form, receive, as it were, a fresh consecration, become adapted to the needs of monumental statuary. Even where it is no longer a question of rejuvenating ancient themes, Myslbek puts forth mature, almost classical creations. Two funeral monuments show to what an extent he could penetrate into the emotional life of humanity, to wrest from it symbols which he clothed with monumental forms. The “Devotion” allegory testifies not only to the strength of his intellect, his masterly skill in giving concrete shape to the idea, but also to his sound mental balance, his direct vision and his energetic hand. His courage and artistic conscience are nowhere more boldly proclaimed than in his great Christ on the Cross, which will easily bear comparison with the old masters. This Christ on the Cross, now hung above an altar in the Sacré Cœur Church at Montmartre is, as compared with the work of the masters of other days, the creation of a modern temperament, which in the Passion can catch a glimpse at once of human greatness and divine beauty. The modelling of the body, firmly nailed to the Cross, is essentially lifelike, yet pure, without any leanings towards Naturalism. But the artist’s power of composition reached its height in the St. Wenceslaus Monument, where the great equestrian statue of the national hero and saint is surrounded by four figures, male and female, of the patron saints of Bohemia. This is his masterpiece. Well-balanced composition, figures austere and monumental, yet glowing with the internal fire of an intense faith, a consummate mastery of craft together with an extreme simplicity of expression—such are the characteristics of this work, so aptly placed in the striking position selected for it, as if to symbolize the unquenchable vitality of the Czech revival, and to prove beyond all doubt that Czech sculpture has become a genuine art. We may also mention the admirable figure “Music” in the foyer of the National Theatre, which fixes, as it were, the fleeting beauty of an air of Smetana’s; the bronze statue of Cardinal Schwarzenberg kneeling, a work of great power; some monuments to famous Czechs; and a series of portraits, among which the busts of Smetana and of the author-actor Koldr rank with the sculptor’s most successful productions.

With Myslbek, Czech statuary was at last raised to the dignity of a true monumental art. Although his work has an air of finality and he admits no laxity in composition, he is in no sense a rigid theorist. Fruitful energy as a teacher soon went hand-in-hand with his productive activity. He is responsible for training two successive generations of Czech sculptors, many of whom at the present day are valiantly vindicating the renown of our national art.

Among the contemporaries, older or younger, of Myslbek, we may single out Josef Maudr, the creator of the Slavín, that mausoleum of the national glories in the Vyšehrad Cemetery (the Prague Acropolis). This monument, and the statues of Astronomy and History which he set up at the entrance to the Bohemian Museum, are in impeccable taste, and show a thorough understanding of his craft. Čeněk Vosmík, trained in Vienna under Wagner’s influence, did several decorative groups, of which those placed on the pylons of the Prague municipal slaughter-house are the most remarkable.

About 1885, when the first monumental erections in the modern style had been begun in Prague, the sculptors were inundated with orders for decorative work. By far the most competent of these sculptor-decorators was the indefatigable Celda Klouček, who limned charming isolated figures for various buildings (e.g., the Bank of Bohemia), but devoted himself chiefly; to decoration. On façades and interiors he lavished a wealth of fresh and original ornamentation, first of all of a historical nature, then consisting of graceful fauna and flora, in delightful intricate patterns, cunningly laid on. The founder of a whole school of capable decorators, he surpasses them all by virtue of his blithe temperament and his active, fertile brain.

The younger men all issued from Myslbek’s school, the master never letting them go until he had furnished them with all the essentials for their individual development. Among these pupils, Stanislav Sucharda first attracted public attention by his “Lullaby,” in which a delicate sense of family life is in pleasing harmony with the pure and sober composition bequeathed to the disciple by his master. Sucharda was not long in gaining the premier place among his fellow-pupils. In the “Mánes” association he never wearied of proclaiming the need for fertilizing, with the aid of the finest specimens of Western art, notably of French art, the local tradition founded by Mánes. It was the period when impressionism was beginning to affect even plastic art, which seemed of its very nature the least amenable to its influence. The material was constrained to undergo the feverish manipulation of modern neurotics, to run into moulds that disregarded all coherence and unity of design. The roughing-chisel scored the clay in a perfect frenzy, leaving innumerable notches and diversifying the surface by violent contrasts of light and shade. It is significant that for this impressionist illusionism in Bohemia—as in fact wherever it appeared in the history of art—the favourite medium was bas-relief, which lies so near to painting. Sucharda’s bas-reliefs, such as for instance the “Treasure” or the “Willow,” are often an impassioned transcript of one of the gloomy ballads of the national singer Erben. Still more often, Sucharda resorts to the lowest of all forms of relief, the plaque. He turned out a large number of these, improvising, in a spirit of ardent and impulsive patriotism, on heroic, historical or popular themes. Dreams of liberty, visions of Prague the victorious, unswerving faith in the mission of the Czech people and of the regenerate Slavs as a whole,—such are the underlying motives of his plaques, large and small. More than once he combines precious stone and rare metal in order to heighten the picturesque effect of some bas-relief in which the Vltava, personified, rises from the waters to gaze admiringly at the Bohemian capital. But all his art, ideas and beliefs are embodied in the work that occupied a considerable part of his life, the monument to the distinguished Czech historian and political leader, František Palacký. This monument, as he conceived it, was to remind posterity of the efforts put forth by the Czech nation, during the nineteenth century, for its political and literary re-awakening. The granite statue of the old man, seated, with flowing drapery over his limbs, is the central figure; radiating from it and converging to it, in various convolutions, are allegorical groups in bronze, symbolizing the successive phases of the Czech renaissance. A woman lying full-length on the ground, naked and emaciated, her wings broken as if after a fall from a dizzy height, represents our prostrate country after the Battle of the White Mountain. The group in which a two-headed monster is trampling on a frail woman, recalls the persecutions of our people under German domination. But on the opposite side, the first harbingers of the revival are already raising the Czechoslovak, breathing new confidence into him and directing him to the lofty teachings of history, as Palacký rescued it from the obscurity of the past to serve as an example and a warning. And history herself, a monumental Sibylline figure, stands by the side of the tall pylon, surrounded by a swarm of figures that twine and rise about it to leap finally to its summit. Here, from the top group, a hand emerges to point upwards to the stars of re-awakened Bohemia, while, horizontally, the “Herald” darts like a lightning-flash from this whirl of figures, using his hand as a trumpet to proclaim to the world that a new nation has come into being and is struggling for its independence. These visions in bronze around the pylon and its summit are the truest expression of Sucharda’s effort, conceived as they are with an impressionist imagination, and seized, as it were, like snapshots from a camera. The clinging draperies are deeply furrowed with a restless rhythm of folds, producing quite a pictorial play of light and shade; the faces and gestures are imbued with a convulsive pathos. We may indeed point to a certain lack of balance in outline and mass, and condemn the preponderance of the architectural over the sculptural element, but the sincere, passionate and vivid expression of the whole and of the details bears the best possible witness to the aims and the capacities of this most typical of Czech impressionist sculptors.

To the impressionist movement we owe another large monument in Prague of about the same date, the one that Ladislav Šaloun erected to the memory of Jan Hus in the principal Square of the Old Town. Here, in contrast to Sucharda, the sculptor has made sure beforehand that he will dominate the architect, and instead of scattering his figures, he has contrived to gather them into a compact whole which rises unconstrainedly from the base. Nevertheless, in composition as well as in modelling, this monument shows far less coherence than Sucharda’s, and the purely plastic qualities are often sacrificed for the sake of picturesque effects.

Among the impressionists, too, we must reckon the mystic František Bílek. A native of Southern Bohemia, the region that has given us our great Reformers, Štítný, Hus, Žižka and Chelčický, he loves to plunge into the depths of the spiritual life in order to endow his creations with the mysterious fire of his religious ecstasies. After studying at the Academy in Prague, he went to learn under Injalbert in Paris, but what inspired him more than the teaching of the master was the example of the great Gothics through his visits to the Louvre and the Trocadéro. The highly original Calvary which he sent from Paris to Prague led to the withdrawal of the scholarship on which he had been living, and he was compelled to return to Bohemia. Here he worked amid the forests of his native South, absorbed in gloomy ecstasies; but he was delivered from these, and attained a more serene outlook on life and humanity, through the friendship he formed, first with the gentle poet Julius Zeyer, then with another poet, the gifted author of mystic improvisations, Otokar Březina. His great Christ on the Cross, carved in wood, the outcome of his visionary vigils, is the conception of a devotee who, going far beneath the surface, portrays the suffering of the spirit rather than of the flesh. “The Blind,” inspired by a poem of Březina, are something more than a man and woman deprived of sight: they symbolize, in an unforgettable way, all our gropings through the mysteries of life. His enormous “Vertigo,” in wood, sets before us, in a most original attitude, man dazzled by the splendour of the infinite. The potent national feeling that links Bílek with the two sculptors previously mentioned is identified, in him, with religious feeling, and constitutes a sort of dizzy Messianism of which he is the eloquent and fiery prophet. No material is distasteful to Bílek: in clay, stone or wood he creates works always personal and highly impressive.

A fourth member of the same generation, the Slovak Franta Úprka, a brother of the painter, Joža Úprka, looked elsewhere for his themes: he turned to the delightful reality of his native soil. The statuettes of his compatriots, men and women in picturesque costumes, kneaded by him in clay, show an observant eye and the hand of a virtuoso who excels in catching expressions.

The artists we have just described, together with a whole host of sculptors of lesser importance, are much alike in mentality and identical in tendencies. They developed at home, and French influence touched them but indirectly. Some younger men, however, wishing to drink at the fountain-head of modern sculpture, successively took the road to Paris. One of these, Josef Mařatka, even succeeded in entering Rodin’s studio, where he remained over three years. At first a pupil, then a collaborator of the master, he was able to develop in the atmosphere, so rich in inspiration, which surrounded that mighty genius, and the latter watched over his young disciple with an ever more paternal eye. Many of Rodin’s works, such as the Prodigal Son and the Victor Hugo monument, were executed in collaboration with Mařatka. For a time, Mařatka even directed studies in Rodin’s studio; he had become an intimate friend of the master and had even been quartered in his villa at Meudon. It is to Mařatka’s efforts, too, that we owe the exhibition of Rodin’s works at Prague in 1903, the first to be held outside Paris—an event that marks an epoch in the history of Czech sculpture. In the studio in the Rue de and in that of Meudon, Mařatka executed the first works exhibited by him at the Salon. Thus in 1904, “The Plump Woman” and an “Ariadne” won him golden opinions. On leaving Rodin’s studio he received, thanks to the master’s good offices, the order for the model of the monument to be erected at Buenos Ayres in honour of the airman, Santos-Dumont. A year later he returned to Prague, to display there an activity as varied and intense as the war allowed. It was he, too, who managed to win over Bourdelle to the Czech cause: the fine exhibition of Bourdelle’s work at Prague in 1909, and the increasingly cordial relations of the French sculptor with Czech artists, have already borne good fruit.

Mařatka left Rodin’s studio with a training that any sculptor might have envied him, and this training proved a wonderful stimulus to his great native talent. Like Rodin, he adores Nature, and seeks to wrest from her her inmost secrets. His youthful works are therefore mostly studies from nature, tiny, fragmentary statuettes in which he fixed the varied movements and constant interplay of bones and muscles, whole series of hands and feet rendered in the minutest detail and with amazing industry. In Rodin’s studio he also had an opportunity of drawing nude figures and female dancers, an exercise that enabled him to catch the fleeting movements of undulating bodies in the electric thrill of the dance. His work at this period consists mainly of slight figures in which his sensitive hand has left its subtle trace. But when called upon to carry out orders of a monumental type, he none the less proved equal to the task, showing more amplitude and more discipline in his composition, but without making the flesh cease to throb with life. Thus the great statues at the doorway and upper storeys of the Prague City Hall reveal admirable taste and surprising dexterity. The portrait-medallions of the Hlávka Bridge at Prague are further evidence of his capacity for synthesis and his decorative sense. At Prague he executed, besides the Hlávka Monument, two granite bas-reliefs, “Commerce” and “Labour,” for the Rudolphinum Bridge, the Attic statues for the Communal Hall, and some statues for funeral monuments, among them the one entitled “Intelligence,” which was to figure in the Autumn Salon of 1914. Some portraits, like that of the composer, Dvořák, admirable in its final form, and the bust of Santos-Dumont (now in the airman’s possession) also bear witness to his solid talent. The new works now maturing in his studio on the Letná Hill will prove that the war, while giving him other work to do for a time, has not hindered his progress. An exhaustive study of his art, from the pen of M. Jules Chopin, is contained in L’Art décoratif for 1912.

Another pupil of Myslbek, Bohumil Kafka, went to Paris to find a solution to the problems that were exercising his brain. He was successful in his quest, and learnt so much there that he was soon able to pit himself even against French artists at the great annual exhibitions. From 1905 he was exhibiting regularly at the Société Nationale and the autumn Salon. In 1908, he exhibited there a collection of twenty-four sculptures, after having attracted the attention of discerning critics by an exhibition at Hébrard’s, to which M. Camille Mauclair had contributed by writing the preface to the catalogue. He is a member of the Autumn Salon and an associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Antoine Le Duc spoke of his work in L’Énergie Française (1906), Jacques Bramson in L’Art décoratif (1906), Francis de Miomandre in L’Art et les Artistes (1908), Camille Mauclair in L’Art décoratif (1908), and Raymond Bouyer in Art et Décoration (1913).

In Kafka’s work, under the influence of French sculpture, an entirely new sensitiveness to impressions comes to the fore, reacting nervously and restlessly on the life about him to a degree hitherto quite unusual in Bohemia. The heroic-cum-patriotic idyll that formed the atmosphere of Myslbek’s studio here gives place to the palpitating life of our day. In Paris, Kafka had set himself to hunt after fresh sensations, to scrutinize the various phases of the modern man’s complex mentality. His early productions were those of an uncompromising realist who drew his inspiration from Nature and rendered the emotions he himself had experienced in a form still rigid. It was not long, however, before dreams got the better of reality. The keenly analytic psychologist felt an overmastering need for clearness, simplicity and synthesis. This period of his career has been brilliantly characterized by M. F. de Miomandre: “It is on the uncontrollable fever of his hand that he relies in order to imbue his creations with that strange energy, that moving thrill, that inimitable style which they possess. And from that fever vitalizing that discipline, from that industry tempering that ardour, springs an art both violent and gentle, both fantastic and natural, highly personal and of an universality altogether antique, vigorously realistic yet diving into the world of dreams, and every day more sober, more stately, more ‘classical.’” Of late years Kafka’s work has shown even more discipline, its form has become more coherent, with more subordination of the parts to the whole. The artist, in approaching the zenith of his powers, has gained the serenity needful for the creation of works that shall reveal his full genius and give complete expression to his ideals.

Another artist who issued from Myslbek’s studio—that alma mater of all our contemporary sculptors—is Jan Štursa, the leader of the younger men. The Impressionism of his precursors did not long hold sway over him, and the ordinary fetters were soon burst by his vigorous temperament, his powerful impulse towards synthesis. After a few experiments in which the wilful spirit of his youth had revealed itself, he developed more self-control, and in his “Girl Brooding” proclaimed his final break with the impressionists. Already a solid consistency of form replaces the lively play of light and shade recommended by the “pleinairists” of sculpture. From the outset, a lyric note is struck, a note peculiarly his own, artless and graceful, entirely original at that period. The young artist even forsakes the old processes, going straight to the material—a hard material for choice—without any preliminaries, eliciting from the stone, with the strokes of his chisel, a fresh, almost primitive representation of humanity. He avoids the types that reflect the highly-strung mood of the age, and chooses, others, of a fine animal health and a natural rusticity. All the female nudes of this period are of the same family. The same healthy flesh, the same sensual beauty appears in all the works, in stone for the most part, that follow each other after 1908, forming a storehouse of natural and unconventional poses. They are all summed up in that “Eve” in the Munich Glyptothek, a sort of symbol of ripe feminine beauty. For a time he even studied the daring poses of the Oriental dancer, Salamit Rahu, but this escapade in the direction of sensuality did not last long. The marble entitled “Life Breaking Out,” now in the National Gallery of Vienna, shows us Štursa reverting to the dreams of his youth. At this date he received some orders for decorative work, and he at once knew how to meet the demands of the monumental style. Thus the statues of “Day” and “Night,” intended to adorn the entrance to a villa, show a strong cohesion of form and an admirably balanced rhythm of outline and masses. At the same time, he worked out several plans for a monument in honour of the famous actress Hanna Kvapilová. Although modern costume hardly lends itself to plastic arrangement, Štursa has moulded the marble in such masterly fashion that the whole appears admirably welded together, instinct with life through the high internal tension, yet in such a way that the airy, delicate beauty of the actress and of her art is fully rendered. A third order of this period, the groups that decorate the pylons in front of the Hlávka Bridge in Prague, are two clusters of human figures linked by a powerful harmony, which worthily crown the architectural conception of the bridge. Unflagging study of plastic problems led Štursa to experiments in which an extreme simplification of mass-effects is combined with an entirely abstract rhythm of human groupings: thus, in the bas-reliefs of the Mánes Bridge, the chisel has followed a broken, almost geometrical line. But from this transient phase the artist soon returned to Nature, and has since attempted to read the inmost secrets of her organism. Called up for active service at the outbreak of the war, he came back to his work radically changed, so that the war has divided his art into two distinct periods. His present period offers a deeper, more tragic and more dramatic conception of life and humanity. We see this in the “Wounded Soldier,” as he falls, shot through the head. In this touching little bronze figure, the sculptor, profoundly impressed as an eye-witness by this incident of war, has caught the fleeting movement with a bold and vigorous hand. The portrait of the painter Švabinský is a work of remarkable insight, and the female figure entitled, “The Gifts of Heaven and Earth” is a creation full of life, the warmth of the blood making itself felt through the velvety suppleness of the form. Thus in Štursa’s work life has once more begun to speak in deeper, intenser, more penetrating accents.

Among the younger men, Otokar Španiel, after being trained under Myslbek, followed the example of Mařatka, Kafka and the rest, and went to finish his apprenticeship in Paris. He spent seven years there, exhibiting at the Société Nationale and the Autumn Salon. At first he was content with turning out impressionist plaques, in which he carved, in delicate relief, portraits of his contemporaries. They form a whole series, including the astronomer Jules Janssen, the historian Ernest Denis, the youthful Milan Rostislav Štefánik, who has since died gloriously as the first War Minister of liberated Czechoslovakia, the poet Vrchlický and other Czech celebrities. After trying to stress the picturesque effect of relief, he soon recognised that it is the plastic character and the construction of masses that really count. His plaques therefore became bolder in design and more coherent in form. In accordance with this change, we note in Španiel a growing predilection for other forms of sculpture which he had till then neglected. It is in this frame of mind that he produced the bust of the Croatian poet, Ivo Vojnović, the Slovene architect Plečnik, the physiologist Purkyně, the painter Jan Preisler and some others. The Musée du Luxembourg in Paris and the Petit Palais contain specimens of Španiel’s art.

Favourable notice has also been accorded to several remarkable works, in low and high relief, by Ladislav Kofránek and Beneš, artists who have recently resumed activities interrupted by the war.

Mention should also be made of Otto Gutfreund, who in his daring attempts excels in divining the tendencies of modern architecture and adapting them to his own sculpture. Our generation is building great hopes on this close collaboration between the sculptor and the architect.