c. 1920s
A bronze sculpture of a Cubist inspired Bugatti type 35 racing car, 1924 - 1926, signed by the artist, numbered 1 out of 5 and cast before 1927. The racing car was cast using the cire perdue technique, whereas the banked racing curve was cast from fine French sand.

Stefan made two trips from his home in Prague to Paris and this sculpture would have been modeled and cast before his style became one of Objective Realism in the late 1920's to the early 1930's. He was in the vanguard of this development although he had experimented in sythentic cubism as early as 1919. Stefan was also Oto Gutfreund's chief assistant for many years. Later in life (from 1940 to 1958) he taught at the Prague School of Decorative Arts. Stefan single handedly took Czech Sculpture to pure abstraction. His ideas were seized upon by a whole generation of Czech sculptors born in 1900 to 1903. This sculpture has the same dynamism as Ottakar Svec's Motorcyclist of 1924, another member of the Czech Kubismus Group of Sculptors known as the ''Strong Nine" (who exhibited as a group in 1922 at the Manes Gallery in Prague). Bedrich Stefan was a calm and quiet man who was deeply inspired by the works of his friend Gutfreund (who is considered perhaps the most important Czech 20 th Century sculptor). Stefan always remained humble even as he exhibited alongside Arp, Giacometti, di Chirico, Klee, Mason, Miro and Tanguy in Paris as well as at the Manes Exhibitions in Prague. This Czech sculptor was highly important in the development of the Avant Garde -- which altered mainsteam appreciation of sculpture and brought it to a new level in the early 20 th Century --to one of constructionalism and organic abstraction, a viewpoint not known before. Many of Bedrich Stefan's sculptures are in the Czech National Museum Prague.
Czech Modernism, 1900-1945, Publisher: Houston, TX: Museum Of Fine Arts, 1990
Musee Rodin, Paris,TCHECOSLOVAQUE DE MYSLBEK A NOS JOURS 1968Czech Sculpture 1800 -1939 National Museum of Wales 1983

Full Gallery Website: www.jennmaur.com Other photos of this sculpture can be viewed there also