Franta Belsky
BORN:
Franta Belsky was born in 1921 in Brno, the son of economist Josef Bělský.
EARLY LIFE:
Belsky fled Czechoslovakia with his family following the German invasion, eventually arriving in England. He volunteered for the Czech Exile Army and served as a gunner in France, earning two mentions in dispatches. After the war, he returned to Prague to discover many relatives had perished in the Holocaust. In 1944, he married newspaper cartoonist Margaret Owen, who signed her work as Belsky. After her death in 1989, he remarried sculptor Irena Sedlecká in 1996. He passed away on 5 July 2000, having sculpted, among other works, two busts of U.S. President Harry S. Truman.
LIVES:
He spent much of his adult life in England, building his career there.
CAREER:
Belsky produced both traditional figurative sculpture and large-scale abstract works. Notable commissions include statues of Winston Churchill, one at the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in Fulton, Missouri, royal busts in the British National Portrait Gallery, Admiral Cunningham in Trafalgar Square, and Mountbatten at Horse Guards, London. He also designed the Torsion Fountain at the Shell Centre and created memorials such as the paratrooper monument and a medal honouring Emil Zátopek. Following the Communist takeover in 1948, he fled Czechoslovakia again to continue his practice freely.
STYLE AND SUBJECTS:
His work combines realism with occasional abstraction, encompassing figures from political, military, and royal spheres, as well as commemorative and public art.
AWARDS AND EXHIBITIONS:
Belsky received the Otto Beit Medal from the Royal British Society of Sculptors for excellence in sculpture, and his work is displayed in prominent public and national collections across the UK and internationally.
Frank Meisler sculpture for sale from The Sculpture Park is detailed below:
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Children £1,020 inc VATTabletop Plaster Head Sculpture – Portrait of a Young Child by Franta Belsky (Signed)
Portrait of a Young Child by Franta Belsky, Plaster
A portrait sculpture of a young child’s head with a stoic expression, made of plaster painted to give the appearance of bronze. Signed and set on a marble base.