Bohumil Kafka

Life and work

He was born on 14 February 1878 in Nová Paka. From 1891 to 1895 he studied at the school of sculpture and stonemasonry in Hořice, from 1896 to 1898 under Stanislav Sucharda at the Prague School of Applied Arts and from 1898 under Josef Václav Myslbek at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1904 he received the Hlávka scholarship and went to Paris; sources differ on the length of his stay (until 1906 or 1908). At the Salon d'Automne he exhibited, among other works, the plaquette Mummy. He was a member of the Mánes Union (from 1898), of the Paris Salon d'Automne and Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and of the Vienna Hagenbund. After Sucharda's death he became professor at the School of Applied Arts in 1916, where he was twice elected rector, and in 1925 professor of sculpture at the Academy. He died on 24 November 1942 in Prague and is buried in the Slavín tomb.

Coins and medals

His principal works include the Karel Havlíček Borovský monument in Havlíčkův Brod (1924), the M. R. Štefánik monument in Bratislava (1928–1935), the statue of Josef Mánes in Prague (1930, unveiled 1951) and the equestrian statue of Jan Žižka on Vítkov, completed in 1941 and unveiled in 1950. Medals and plaquettes form a smaller but consistent part of his oeuvre; GAVU Cheb and the Prague 2 encyclopedia both describe him as sculptor, medallist and teacher. His work is treated in Petr Wittlich's monograph Bohumil Kafka (1878–1942): The Story of a Sculptor (2014).

From the work in the AUREA range

The AUREA range includes his one-sided bronze medal of 1921, 50 mm, issued for the fiftieth anniversary of the work of the graphic artist Jan Vilím (1871–1921).