Lot 101

Karel Dvořák (1893 - 1950) SAILOR

Karel Dvořák completed his studies in 1917-1919 under Prof. J. Stursa. He belonged to a strong generation of sculptors who influenced the shape of Czech sculpture until the second half of the 20th century. Dvořák's important work, The Sailor, was created in the same year as the portrait of Otto Gutfreund, whose work inspired him; in addition to his social civicism, he was also characterised by a position with a nod to the Italian Renaissance and, in his later work, by dynamic, almost baroque modelling. The motif of the sailor can also be found in Karel Dvořák's work on the portal of the Adria Palace (1922-1925), where it is positioned as a personification of Trieste and Prague with attributes of maritime trade (ship, sack over the shoulder) and agriculture. Published: J. Pečírka: Karel Dvořák, Prague 1955, p. 27; J. Kotalík: Tschechische Kunst der 20er+30er Jahre. Avantgarde und Tradition, Darmstadt 1988, repro p. 53; K. Srp: In the New World. Conditions of Modernity 1917-1927, Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava 2018, repro p. 120.