Josef Václav Myslbek

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Czech. (April 2014) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Czech Wikipedia article at [[:cs:Josef Václav Myslbek]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|cs|Josef Václav Myslbek}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this article. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Josef Václav Myslbek" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Josef Václav Myslbek (20 June 1848 – 2 June 1922) was a Czech sculptor and medalist credited with founding the modern Czech sculpting style.^[1]

Josef grew up poor in a suburb of Prague. His family pushed him to become a shoemaker but he shirked the duty by getting a job with a succession of Czech sculptors. There was no school program for sculpting so he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague instead. Afterwards he opened his own sculpting studio. He became greatly inspired by the French sculpting style as well as related arts such as photography and literature. Josef Václav Myslbek influenced an entire generation of Czech sculptors and his students include Stanislav Sucharda, Jan Štursa and Bohumil Kafka. Myslbek is buried in Prague's National Cemetery.

Myslbek's most famous work is the Statue of Saint Wenceslas, which is located in the center of Wenceslas Square. It took him over 20 years to complete but has since become one of Prague's most recognizable landmarks and a symbol of Czech statehood.

In 1871, Myslbek produced some of his greater works including a commission to do a set of statues for the National Theater. Later he would do busts and monuments of several famous Czechs such as Bedřich Smetana and František Palacký.

His four pairs of statues for the Palacký Bridge have been relocated to the Vyšehrad:

• Libuše and Přemysl, depicts Přemysl, the Ploughman and Libuše
• Lumír and Píseň , depicts Lumír (a legendary bard) and Píseň ("song")
• Záboj and Slavoj, heroic brothers from the "Rukopis královédvorský"
• Ctirad and Šárka, characters from The Maidens' War, a traditional Bohemian tale

• Media related to Josef Václav Myslbek at Wikimedia Commons