Otakar Švec

Gigantic (15 metres high) monument by Otakar Švec in honour of Joseph Stalin in Prague-Letná. It was finished in 1955, two years after Stalin's death and destroyed in November 1962

Otakar Švec (November 23, 1892 - March 3, 1955) was a Czech sculptor best known for his colossal granite Monument to Stalin in Prague, Czech Republic.

A pupil of Josef Václav Myslbek and Jan Štursa, Švec had produced the important 1924 Futurist sculpture Sunbeam Motorcycle, now in the National Gallery in Prague, and at least three major public monuments to Tomáš Masaryk, Jan Hus, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The first two were destroyed by the Germans during World War II, and the other by the Soviet occupation.

Švec entered the competition for the Stalin Monument assuming that it was politically fixed, and he hoped only for second prize. Švec won, and the political pressures of the job destroyed him. The sculpture was unveiled on May Day, 1955, but Švec had killed himself by kitchen gas three weeks earlier, following the example of his wife. This world's largest representation of Stalin, dominating the city, stood for only seven years before the political climate changed. It was brought down in October 1962 with 800 kilograms of dynamite.

Sources

• Figuration/Abstraction: Strategies for Public Sculpture in Europe 1945-1968, by Charlotte Benton
• source on a recent show of Švec's work