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Portraits occupy a special place in Vladimír Preclík's oeuvre, as he himself has written: "Portraits are a chance to peer into the human psyche. It can represent the outer shell, or also the core, the character, the spirit. It can separate what's important from what isn't. It reveals the expression, personality – and that's more difficult than skin-deep realism." In 1957–1960 Preclík especially focused on portrait work; the likenesses of major figures in Czech culture were created under his hand in his "Czech avant-garde" cycle. Like the entire series of portraits, this self-portrait of the sculptor, which was also made in 1957, is not marked by "a typical style", but by the effort to capture the portrayed subject's characteristic inner expression and its corresponding form. The Cubist style of the self-portrait is bold, but the viewer's attention is drawn to what is "behind the face". Published in: Jan Baleka: Vladimír Preclík, Academia, Prague, 2004, p. 261. From the artist's family estate. Bronze, unsigned.