Kurt Gebauer

Kurt Gebauer (*1941) is a sculptor, painter, and educator, one of the most significant figures in Czech sculpture of the second half of the 20th century. His works have populated Czech public space like few others: the Heart for Václav Havel by the National Theatre in Prague, the giant Dwarfs from the 1980s, the Girl on a Chair in Ostrava-Hrabůvka, the bronze Mozart in front of the Reduta Theatre in Brno, and the mirror-finish TýTý awards. After the Velvet Revolution, he took over a sculpture studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM), renamed it the Studio of All Sculpture, and for over twenty years, shaped the contemporary Czech sculpture scene within it. In 2020, the National Gallery Prague organized a comprehensive retrospective for him at the Trade Fair Palace, and the Czech Academy of Visual Arts named him Artist of the Year; for 2025, it inducted him into its Hall of Fame. His works are represented in the collections of the National Gallery Prague, the Olomouc Museum of Art, and the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, where his sculpture stands among works by Rodin, Moore, and Calder.