Kurt Gebauer

Sculptor, painter, teacher and a long-standing advocate of good public space, born on 18 August 1941 in Hradec nad Moravicí. His father, Franz Gebauer, a German from the Hlučín region, a potter and stove maker, was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1940 and died near Stalingrad in early 1942; he grew up alone with his mother in very modest circumstances. From childhood he taught himself drawing and painting. He studied ceramics at the Secondary School of Applied Crafts in Brno (1955–1956), then moved to the Technical School for Quarrying and Stone Working in Hořice (1956–1959) and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague under Professors Karel Hladík, Vincenc Makovský and Karel Lidický. He completed placements with Otto Herbert Hajek in Stuttgart (1965) and with César Baldaccini at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris (1972).

He has worked as a freelance sculptor since 1969. In 1990 he was appointed associate professor at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, and in 1992 professor and head of the studio of sculpture in all its forms; he is now professor emeritus.

His work includes sculptures for particular places, interventions in the landscape, stacked stones, portrait busts, drawing, lithography and photography; typical are figurative motifs bound up with their setting (Swimmers, Dwarfs and others). Solo exhibitions include the Petr Bezruč Memorial in Opava (1972), the House of Art of the City of Brno (1990) and a number of regional galleries; group exhibitions include the Prague Salons (1969) and the exhibition Generation One (Litomyšl Chateau, 2017).

Works: The Drowned Vltava by the National Theatre in Prague (2000), Birds in Opava (2006), A Heart for Václav Havel on Václav Havel Square in Prague (2016). His students include David Černý.