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Polychrome plaster. A plaster study of Legionnaires by the excellent Czech sculptor Otto Gutfreund presents figures of members of the John Jiskra of Brandys 3rd Riflemen Regiment and 1st Cavalry Regiment. The artist’s brushmarks are easily distinguishable on the surface of the statues; the faces of both soldiers are finely detailed. Otto Gutfreund joined the Czech and Slovak volunteers of the French Army right at the beginning of World War I, in August of 1914. As a member of “Nazdar” Company in the French Foreign Legion, he fought near Arras in May 1915, where several of his close friends died. In the autumn of 1915 Gutfreund and three other members of the Nazdar company openly led the Czech and Slovak resistance to the French law that prohibited soldiers of belligerent states (including Austria-Hungary) from being accepted to the French Army. For this reason, the “Nazdar” company was also disbanded and its soldiers scattered to foreign units. Gutfreund was convicted for participating in the “Corporal Affair” and imprisoned in French internment camps until the end of the war. Intervention by representatives of the Czechoslovak government in the autumn of 1918 let to his release. Ref.: Catalogue: Otto Gutfreund – Catalogue raisonné: no. 207, p. 238. Confirmation from the artist’s family estate is attached.