I wanted to show the communist sculptors how it should be done
Kurt Gebauer was born on 18 August 1941 in Hradec nad Moravicí. During WW II his dad who was a Bohemian German was drafted to the Wehrmacht and at the beginning of 1942 died under unknown circumstances. Kurt Gebauer grew up in modest conditions. Ever since childhood he was interested in visual art and taught himself the fundaments of drawing, painting and later also sculpture. After finishing elementary school he enrolled to a high school of art crafts in Brno. At the beginning of his second year he transferred to a stone-cutting and sculpture school in Hořice. Because of his bad profile in the eyes of the regime he wasn’t allowed to study at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design and only following the fourth attempt was he admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In the fall of 1972 he underwent an internship at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1987 he participated in a revolt against the stances of the Association of Czech Visual Artists and helped establish alternative artist groupings. After the Velvet Revolution he served as a board member of the Czech Fund for Visual Arts. For twenty-two years he had served as head of an atelier at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. As of today he still gives consultations, collaborates with several graduate students as a professor emeritus and produces his own art.
