Stock No: 6552

RETURNEDDRUMMOND COLLECTED OCT 2019

AGENT PROVOCATEUR FROM THE ROOF OF THE LENIN MUSEUM IN PRAGUE SCULPTOR: IRENA SEDLECKA - Fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculptors & member of the Royal Society of Portrait Sculptors. Irena Sedlecka was one of three Czech sculptors, along with Svata Hajerova and Ludvig Kodym, both now deceased, who were invited in the early 1950's by the then Communist Party of Czecholslovakia to decorate the roof of the new Lenin Museum in Prague.They were to design the six statues to depict heroic characteristics of the revolutionary state and they were to be big and inspiring, at least 2.5m high.They decided to create two each and the subjects chosen were a Mother & Children & a Machine Gunner: a Corps Commander & a Cossack and An Agent Provocateur & a Worker. Irena sculpted the last two and it is thought that she took inspiration for the Agent Provocateur from the life of Vasili Ivanovich Chapayev (1887 - 1919) a celebrated Russian soldier and Red Army Commander during the Russian Civil War who died a hero at the age of 32.

Six half size clay models were made and the final pieces were carved in situ, by expert masons, out of six massive two tonne sandstone blocks placed on the roof of the Museum. The roof was very high and the statues were designed to be seen from below silhouetted against heavy skies and were made to survive frosty, stone-flaking winters. With the fall of the Czech Communist Party in the Velvet Revolution in November 1989 effigies of the communist rule were removed from many buildings and these statues were to be toppled from the Museum roof. In the run-up to the formation of the Czech Republic in 1991 they were saved and brought to England by an English Antique dealer.

Irena Sedlecka was born on 7th September 1928 and escaped to Britain in the late 1960's settling in London where she still lives. Her work, which is in many private collections, includes sculpture portraits of the actors Lord Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Richard Briers, and the statue of Beau Brummell in Piccadilly, London. Perhaps her most famous piece is the large statue of Freddie Mercury of Queen, now in Montreux, Switzerland.
Czech 1950's

Link to: Antique, old vintage fountains, sculptures, garden furniture and statuary