Milan Knobloch

Life and work

He was born on 10 August 1921 in Královské Vinohrady. He spent his first six years in Yugoslavia, where his father, an employee of the Pražská úvěrní banka, had been transferred. During the war he worked as an accountant at the Karlín metalworks and was later conscripted to forced labour at the Letov aircraft works. After unsuccessful applications in 1945–1946 he was admitted in 1947 to the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, to the school of Jan Lauda and then to Otakar Španiel's three-year special school; he completed his studies in 1953. His works are held by the National Gallery and the National Museum in Prague, the British Museum in London and the Museum of Coins and Medals in Kremnica. He took the death mask of Bohuslav Martinů; his three-metre bronze statue of the composer was unveiled in Polička in 1990 in the presence of President Václav Havel. He was named Meritorious Artist (1980). He died on 29 March 2020.

Coins and medals

His medals portray, among others, Charles IV, Wenceslaus Hollar, Johannes Kepler, Nicolaus Copernicus, Marie Curie-Skłodowska, Mozart, Smetana, Dvořák, Božena Němcová, Alois Jirásek and Alois Rašín; for his jubilee medal of William Shakespeare he received the thanks of the British Queen. He designed fifteen commemorative coins and the coin St Wenceslas Tribute to Benedict XVI for the papal visit of 2009.

From the work in the AUREA range

The AUREA range includes his silver medal for the 600th anniversary of the death of Emperor Charles IV (1978, Ag 750, 40 mm) and the patinated bronze Estates Theatre medal (1991, 40 mm, cased), issued in the bicentenary year of the premiere of Mozart's Don Giovanni at that theatre.