franta belsky·1921 - 2000

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use the down arrow to view option ========================= link to further material not in books ========================= ---------- section b ---------- bacon, john [BWM] baily, edward hodges [BWM] baker, sir herbert [Rem] behnes, william [BWM] bell, john [BWM] belsky, franta [BWM] binyon, laurence [Rem] blomfield, sir reginald [Rem] blunden, edmund [Rem] boehm, sir edgar [BWM] brock, sir thomas [BWM] butler, james [BWM] burdett-coutts, william [Rem] burnet, sir john james [Rem] ========================= ---------- section c ---------- chantrey, sir francis [BWM] churchill, sir winston [Rem] cockerell, professor charles [BWM] comper, sir ninian [BWM] ========================= ---------- section d ---------- derwent wood, professor francis [Rem] dick, sir william reid [BWM] drury, alfred [BWM] ========================= ---------- section e ---------- epstein, sir jacob [BWM] ========================= ---------- section f ---------- flaxman, professor john [BWM] frampton, sir george [BWM] ========================= ---------- section g ---------- gill, eric [BWM] gleichen, count victor [BWM] goscombe john, sir william [BWM] gotto, captain basil [BWM] ========================= ---------- section h ---------- haig, field marshall earl douglas [Rem] hepworth, philip [Rem] holden, charles [Rem] hutton, john [Rem] ========================= ---------- section j ---------- jackson, philip [BWM] jagger, charles sargeant [Rem] jones, captain adrian [BWM] ========================= ---------- section k ---------- kennington, eric [BWM] kenyon, colonel sir frederic [Rem] kipling, joseph rudyard [Rem] ========================= ---------- section l ---------- lafontaine, colonel cart de [Rem] lantéri, professor édouard [BWM] ledward, professor gilbert [BWM] lewis, sir robert [Rem] lloyd george, earl dwyfor - om [Rem] lorimer, sir robert [Rem] lutyens, sir edwin - om [Rem] ========================= ---------- section m ---------- mackenall, sir bertram [BWM] mallock, vivien [BWM] marochetti, baron carlo [BWM] marsh, sir edward howard [Rem] maufe, sir edward [Rem] mcmillan, william [BWM] melchett, lord [Rem] millington, major tasman [Rem] mills, john w [BWM] mond, sir alfred [Rem] ========================= ---------- section n ---------- nash, john [BWM] nightingale, florence - om [Rem] ========================= ---------- section 0 ---------- orpen, sir william [Rem] owen, wilfred [Rem] ========================= ---------- section p ---------- pegram, henry alfred [BWM] poole, henry [Rem] ========================= ---------- section r ---------- reid dick, sir william [BWM] roberts-jones, ivor [BWM] rosenburg, isaac [Rem] ========================= ---------- section s ---------- sassoon, siegfried [Rem] shepheard, sir peter [Rem] singer sargent, john [Rem] soissons, louis de [Rem] spencer, sir stanley [BWM] ========================= ---------- section t ---------- thornycroft, sir (william) hamo [BWM] toft, albert [BWM] turner, alfred [BWM] tweed, john [BWM] ========================= ---------- section w ---------- wade, george [BWM] ware, major general sir fabian [Rem] webb, sir aston [BWM] westmacott, sir richard [BWM] wheeler, sir charles [BWM] winter, faith [BWM] wood, francis derwent [BWM] worthington, sir hubert [Rem]

Franta Belsky was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia on 6 April 1921, son of the economist Joseph Belsky. The family fled to England following the Nazi dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in October 1938. Franta volunteered for the Czech exile army, was introduced to Winston Churchill, fought in France as an artilleryman, was twice mentioned in despatches and decorated for bravery.

“Among Churchill sculptors, only Oscar Nemon escaped criticism, either from the subject, from family or friends”

He studied sculpture at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art and married Margaret Owen, a fellow student in 1944. She went on to become the well-known, successful cartoonist ‘Belsky' and was the first woman to draw a daily front-page political cartoon in Britain. She died in 1989 and in 1996 he married the sculptor Irena Sedlecka. After the war he returned to Prague and discovered that 22 of his relatives had perished in the Holocaust.

He sculpted the Paratroop Memorial in Prague and designed a medal in honour of the Olympic athlete Emil Zatopek. Belsky fled Czechoslovakia again following the Communist takeover of that country in 1948. As well as statues and busts, he executed many abstract designs and developed novel techniques. His Triga (1958) at Caltex House, Knightsbridge is a 30 foot-high group of three rearing horses in reinforced concrete with a metal coating. In 1969 Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri commissioned Belsky to create the eight-foot tall bronze Churchill to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ‘Iron Curtain' speech there. Among Churchill sculptors, only Oscar Nemon escaped criticism, either from the subject, from family or friends. Belsky was no exception, although the reception given his statue was not so bad as that which had been given to Jacob Epstein's 1946 bust, David McFall's 1959 statue at Woodford in Essex, or the furore which greeted Ivor Roberts-Jones's ‘deformed giant' in Parliament Square.

However, when Belsky was able to return to Prague in 1989 after the ‘Velvet Revolution' he was commissioned to produce a statue of Churchill for the British Embassy there. In the meantime, he sculpted the portrait bust Churchill in the Archive Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, a copy of which is in the Churchill Hotel, Portman Square, London; and a large and unusual bas relief bronze plaque on the landing of the Conservative Club at Hoddesdon, Herts.

Belsky was renowned for his painstaking technique. Most sculptors make a number of working models on the way to developing their finished work, Belsky produced no fewer than nine half-scale models before completion of the Fulton commission. It was his habit to seal inside each of his castings a Guinness bottle, a copy of that day's newspaper, a sixpence and a note declaring that Franta Belsky was the artist.

In answer to the suggestion to former US president Harry S Truman that an American sculptor should sculpt his bust, Truman reportedly replied: ‘Hell, no, if I ever pose for anybody it will be the guy who did Winston in Fulton'. Belsky duly obliged and the resulting busts may be found in the Presidential Library, Independence, Missouri and at the Truman Dam on the Osage River in Missouri.

Belsky sculpted the Cholmondeley Park Military Monument in Cheshire, where the Czechoslovak soldiers were initially based after escaping from France. Belsky's bronze heads of Cecil Day-Lewis (1952); Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1979); Queen Elizabeth II (1981); Prince Andrew, Duke of York (1984) and John Egerton Christmas Piper (1987) may all be found in the Primary Collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Belsky sculpted the Czechoslovak Army and Air Force Memorial (1993) in the west cloister of Westminster Abbey and also the bronze statue Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1982) which stands on Foreign Office Green in London. In the 1970s and 80s Belsky was commissioned by the ferry company Sealink to execute large murals for their ships HENGIST, HORSA, SENLAC, ST EDMUND, and ST COLUMBA.

Belsky was for many years a prominent figure in the affairs of the RBS and an active member of their council. He was elected ARBS in 1957 and FRBS in 1961. He was President of the Society of Portrait Sculptors 1996-99. His successor, Anthony Stones, described him as: ‘one of the most important sculptors in Britain's post-war history'.

Franta Belsky died from prostate cancer at home at Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire at the age of 79 on 5 July 2000. His papers may be found in the archives of the Henry Moore Centre in Leeds.