|
She can make heroes
Behind this encounter is the stuff of 20th-century legend: lives shaped by world war, a dedication to art and the compromises imposed on creative workers by systems of patronage... Words and pictures published in Independent on Saturday magazine. I own copyright in this material. The full copy can be made available for inspection to bona fide publishers subject to agreement on a licence fee payable on publication. |
The
sculptor, Irena Sedlecka was one of a group commissioned to create heroic
statues for the roof of the Lenin Museum in Prague. She was at the start
of her career in the Soviet-run Czechoslovakia of the 1950s. More than 40
years later, as an established portraitist working in the UK, she
rediscovered them waiting for sale in an architectural salvage yard in
Surrey. Works that had earned her no more than derisory fees were now
tagged at £40,000 each.