- Franta Belsky
Franta Belsky was a Czech sculptor.
He was born in
Brno ,Czechoslovakia , in 1921, the son of the economistJoseph Belsky . With his family, he fled to England after the German invasion, and volunteered for theCzech Exile Army . He fought in France as a gunner and was twicementioned in dispatches .He returned to
Prague after the war to find that many of his relations had perished inthe Holocaust . He designed a paratroop memorial, and a medal in honour ofEmil Zátopek , before fleeing again to escape the Communist takeover in 1948.His work includes not only traditional statues and busts, but also large-scale more abstract works. He produced a number of statues of
Winston Churchill , one inFulton, Missouri . His royal busts are in the British National Portrait Gallery, his Admiral Cunningham inTrafalgar Square and Mountbatten inHorse Guards , in London.In 1944 he married Margaret Owen the cartoonist and after her death,
Irena Sedlecka in 1996. He sculpted two busts of U.S. PresidentHarry S. Truman before dying on 5 July 2000.References
*"Sculpture", Franta Belsky ISBN-13: 978-0302006139).
*"The Churchill Papers", The Churchill Centre.
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