Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1921 Brno, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)

Died: 2000 Abingdon, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1938

Other name/s: František, Franta Belsky

Biography

Sculptor Franta Bělský was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) in 1921, the son of eminent economist Joseph Bělský. His studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague were interrupted by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in spring 1939, forcing Bělský and his family to seek refuge in Britain. Bělský continued his training in London at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, then won a place at the Royal College of Art (RCA). Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Bělský enlisted with the Czech units forming in Britain and was sent to France in May 1940 but, with the collapse of French resistance, the unit made its way south, returning to England via Gibraltar a month after the Dunkirk evacuation. The Czech units then gathered in Cholmondeley Park, Cheshire, where they were reviewed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, whom Bělský scrutinised closely, resolving, when the time came, to sculpt him as he had seen him that day. During the years before preparations for the Allied Normandy Invasion of 1944, Bělský was sent by the Czech army to continue his studies under Richard Garbe at the RCA, where in 1943 he exhibited Weasel, carved from Jarra Wood carried around in his kitbag. He returned to Prague after the war to find that 22 of his relations had perished in the Holocaust, before fleeing to England for a second time to escape the Communist takeover of 1948. He resumed his studies at the RCA, this time under sculptors Frank Dobson and John Skeaping. Before graduating, Bělský exhibited his posthumous portrait of Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk at the Royal Academy of Art in 1949 and, in 1950, that of Lt. Col. Vladimir Peniakoff, a Belgian-born Russian Jewish émigré who had been a personal friend. His over-life-size bronze figure of Cecil Rhodes, founder of Rhodesia, executed in 1953 and unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II, demonstrated his skill for tackling monumental figures but attracted little attention in Britain. More interest was directed towards the newly established Society of Portrait Sculptors (of which Bělský was a founding member) and its exhibition Personalities in Sculpture, held in Edinburgh in 1954, and subsequently at the Imperial Institute Gallery in London, to which Bělský contributed his portrait of Peniakoff.

Subsequent commissions in Britain included numerous architectural sculptures for schools in Hertfordshire and Essex; Lesson for London County Council (1955),Triga (1958), a 30ft-high group of three rearing horses created for Caltex House, Knightsbridge, London; Joy Ride (1958) for Stevenage New Town Centre in Hertfordshire, and a monumental fountain (1959–61), conceived as a 'sculptural counterpart' to Bach's Tocata and Fugue in D, for the Shell Building, South Bank, London. He also sculpted a sequence of highly prestigious naval portraits culminating in the nine-foot statue of Lord Mountbatten which stands in London's Horse Guards Parade, unveiled in 1983. It is well known that Bělský was idiosyncratic in his approach to commissions, in this case, hiding a jam jar containing coins and press cuttings in the statue's left leg.

The opportunity to work up his memories of Churchill from 1940 came to fruition with a commission by Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, USA for an over-life-size bronze unveiled in 1971. Bělský was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy of Arts in London from 1943 and is the only sculptor to have modelled four generations of the British Royal family. He was a member of the Council of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, a governor of St Martin's School of Art, London and a founder member of the Society for Portrait Sculptors (later its President). Following his first wife's death Bělský married the sculptor Irena Sedlecká. In 1999 Bělský was awarded the Medal of Merit by the then President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel. Franta Bělský died in Abingdon, Oxfordshire in 2000. Following the sale of the contents of Bělský and Sedlecká's atelier in 2017, there has been renewed interest in their work, including in Ben Uri's exhibition, Czech Routes to Britain and in Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art, held at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol (RWA), both in 2019, with accompanying publications. Bělský's work can be found in UK collections including Leeds City Art Galleries and London's National Portrait Gallery and National Theatre. The Henry Moore Institute Archive in Leeds holds a range of material associated with Bělský's sculptural work throughout his career, including on his major commissions relating to Sir Winston Churchill, Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham, and The Earl Mountbatten of Burma.

Related books

Nicola Baird ed., Czech Routes to Britain (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2019)
Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
The Atelier Sale of Franta Bělský and Irena Sedlecka (Oxford: Mallams, 2017)
Jutta Vinzent, 'List of Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain, 1933–1945', in Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945) (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006)
Margaret Garlark, 'A Minor Language? Three Émigré Sculptors and their Strategies of Assimilation' in Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet, eds., Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–1945: Politics and Cultural Identity, The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies 6 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005) pp. 167-200
Franta Bělský, Sculpture (London: A. Zwemmer Ltd, 1992 and 2003)
'Obituary Franta Bělský', The Times, 7 July 2000, p. 21
Mervyn Levy, ‘The Shell Fountain by Franta Bělský’, Studio, Vol. 165, No. 842, June 1963
Susan Whittet, ‘Franta Bělský’, Studio, Vol. 154, No. 772, July 1957

Public collections

Related organisations

Academy of Fine Arts, Prague (student)
Central School of Arts and Crafts (student)
Royal College of Art (student)
Royal Society of British Sculptors (member)
Society for Portrait Sculptors (founder and later, President)
St Martins' School of Art (governor)

Selected exhibitions

Franta Bělský, 100 Anniversary: The artist who connected London with Prague, Embassy of Czech Republic, London (2021)
Czech Routes to Britain: Selected Czechoslovak Artists from the Ben Uri and Private Collections, Ben Uri Gallery (2019)
Face 2001: the Society of Portrait Sculptors, The 38th Exhibition, The Gallery, Cork Street (2001)
Czech and Slovak Sculptors in Great Britain, Czechoslovak Embassy, London (1992)
The Royal Academy (intermittently between 1943 and 1970)
Society of Portrait Sculptors, RWS Galleries (1963, 1960, 1959)
Exhibition of Sculpture by Franta Bělský, University of Birmingham (1959)
Personalities in Sculpture, Society of Portrait Sculptors, Edinburgh and Imperial Institute Gallery, London (1954)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Franta Bělský]