sculptor, restorer, medalist, pedagogue
He was born at Veľký Rovný in the Bytča district. In the years 1946-1951 he studied at School of Applied Arts in Prague with Professora Karel Pokorný, where he worked as an assistant from 1950 to 1952. From the mid-fifties he devoted himself to independent work.
He created a number of works, including monumental sculptures for public space – Phoenix, Ikaros, Harlequin, Return from cosmos space for Central Telecommunication Building in Prague, Monument to the Liberation in Liberec, Blossom for the hospital in Most, sculptural group The work before VSB-TUO in Ostrava-Poruba (1972), New Age in Frýdek-Místek (1981), STELE with time measuring in Prague - Florenc (1985) or the fountain RIVER (1989).
In 1988 he was awarded the title of National Artist.
Life
RUDOLF SVOBODA was a prominent Czech artist from the second half of the twentieh century. He was born on November 24., 1924 at Velke Rovne near Zilina in the North-Western Slovakia.
In the years 1946-1951 he studied at School of Applied Arts in Prague. Here he was a student and later a collaborator of professor Karel Pokorny, one from the protagonists of modern sculpture in the period between the War I and War II, and in the post-War Czechoslovakia.
During his studies and shortly after he was graduated Rudolf Svoboda acted as a lecturer and an assistant professor of professor Pokorny in a Special Section of the School of Applied Arts.
In the year 1955 he selected the independent career as his mission. He pursued the chamber sculpture activity as a free ornamental activity. He introduced against the studio against the advancing decorative tendency and against the copying accidental nature sections in his creative work an effoft of arts freedom and a life freedom. His proverbial resistance and persistence together with the internal enthusiasm he could establish a new tradition, a new chronology in the creative acts flow of our fathers and grandfathers.
He inspired himself by the old Hellas bronzes, by Mirin terracotas, by the art of pre-Columbus America, by Michelangelo, by Bransusi and Arpe and like that he attained a racy expression, by what he achieved an European highrepute and influenced the contemporary Czechoslovak sculptural evens appearance.
Work
His objects Svoboda forms in wide expression scale from the realism to the abstraction. Among his most favourised themes there were mother and child, danceuses, flowers, wings, Icarus, Clown, Jugglers, but also symbols against the war and genocide. The artist worked with the same skill in metal, stone, plaster or concrete. Unique are especially his sculptures made in bronze, tin, red brass imposant are the cleannes of exact smooth forms.
Into the set of more than 40 important realisation of monumental creations of Rudolf Svoboda appertain for example a capacious ornamental sculpture RETURN FROM COSMOS SPACE installed in front of the Central Telecommunication Building in Prague; the Calendar-Clock at Prague Castle on the Mihulka Tower (kinetic ornamental sculpture with the time measuring); the GRATEFUL PATRIA in Pilsen; the LABOUR in Ostrava; STELE with time measuring installation at the Underground Railway Station Florenc, Prague; the fountain RIVER at the School of Economic Prague; the kinetic ornamental sculpture MOVEMENT at Velešin; the ornamental sculpture SPACE in the HOTEL DIPLOMAT Prague; the TORZO in a private collection Zürich, etc.
All his work of art is in outdoor location or joined with the architecture reveal his ability exemlary apply the unity of sculptural and architectonical invention. He realised about 50 individual expositions,mainly at Prague, Bratislava and other places of Czechoslovakia, but als in Berlin, Hamburg, Heilbronn, Dachau, Würzburg, Nürnberg, Erfurt, Starberg (Germany); in Los Angeles, Seattle (USA); in Cairo, Alexandria (Egypt); Habana (Cuba); Wienna (Austria); Anvers (Belgium) etc.
He participatednon 238 collective expositions at home and abroad in many important cultural centers of for continents. Works of art from the sculptor Rudolf Svoboda are owned by the National Gallery Prague, by Land and District Galleries and Museums in Czech republic, by central organisations and another leading boards and and museums of Czechoslovakia.
His works of arts are to be found in many official and private collections abroad. He was also the winner of many creative competions, was decorated with many distictions and ordens honouring his unrepeteable sculptural art of European exent and European significance.
