Skull

What the sculpture looks like

The sculpture is called Skull. It shows a large, simplified skull made of pale wooden boards and beams. The wood has its natural colour. In some places it is almost creamy pale, elsewhere it has a warmer, yellowish tone. Growth rings, knots, saw marks and screws are visible on the surface. The wood is not painted. The structure openly shows how it was made: joints, battens, screws and overlapping parts. The object is not a realistic anatomical model. It is a spatial construction that captures the basic shape of a human skull. Some parts recall shelves or fragments of scaffolding.

The sculpture stands on a paved square beside the pale wall of the monastery. The wall has a rough rendered surface. Because of this the wooden skull stands out clearly against a calm and almost uniform background. The object can be walked around and viewed from different sides. The sculpture rests directly on the ground. It has no separate plinth. The lower beams form a base that stabilises the whole structure.

The skull is larger than life. It recalls a piece of furniture or a child's den. It measures roughly one and a half metres in height and about two metres in length. The largest part of the sculpture is the structure resembling the upper part of the skull. It has an angular shape with a rounded outline, as though cut off. At the front it is broad and slightly tilted. The sides narrow towards the back. The upper part does not form a smooth vault. It is assembled from several planes of straight boards. These meet at slight angles and together create the rounded shape of the skull.

The front of the sculpture resembles the face of a skull. On both sides there are large irregular openings recalling eye sockets. They are neither round nor symmetrical as in a real skull; they arise from the gaps between boards arranged diagonally and vertically. The edges of the eye sockets are straight and formed by boards tilted at various angles. Between the eye sockets a narrow structure of vertical and diagonal boards projects forward. It recalls the nasal bone or the middle part of a face. It is made of several pale boards running downwards, gently dividing the front of the sculpture into two halves.

Below them is a wide rectangular frame. It forms the lower part of the face and the base of the jaw. The jaw is suggested in a very simplified way. Along the bottom of the front there is a row of vertical boards set side by side with gaps between them. They recall teeth, though not their exact shape. It is more a rhythm of simple wooden elements. The lower edge of the jaw looks broad and massive.

The upper part of the skull is covered with boards laid one above another. They lie parallel to each other and create regular bands. At the front they run almost horizontally. Along the sides they gradually change direction and shift into a more vertical or diagonal arrangement. This change of orientation emphasises the individual planes of the structure – front, side and back.

The edges of the sculpture are pronounced, in places sharp and angular. There is no soft modelling and there are no flowing transitions. The skull is built from straight cuts, diagonal boards and joined beams. Even so, the whole keeps a clearly recognisable shape of a head. Its most striking elements are the large upper part of the skull, the empty eye sockets, the narrowed middle of the face and the lower row of boards resembling teeth.

The inside of the sculpture is empty. The boards form an outer shell and a load-bearing structure, while the centre remains open. Inside, further beams and cross braces are visible, strengthening the whole construction.

How to find the sculpture

Piaristické náměstí square, České Budějovice. The sculpture stands on the paved square beside the light, roughly rendered wall of the monastery. It rests directly on the ground with no separate plinth – the lower beams form its base. You can walk all the way around it.