Vlasta Prachatická

In 1968 she accompanied Stanislav Kolíbal on his study stay in Vence. Thanks to Kolíbal's scholarship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), she spent the years 1988 and 1989 in Berlin. Thanks to the support of the Calder Foundation, she spent half a year in Saché, France in 1992. Since 2006 she has been an honorary member of the British Society of Portrait Sculptors.

In 1967 she was invited to join an exhibition of five sculptors at the Václav Špála Gallery (Pacík, Zoubek, Kmentová, Vinopalová, Prachatická) and represented Czechoslovakia at the Sculpture Biennale in Middelheim, Belgium. She won the competition for a portrait of Jan Masaryk for the entrance hall of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia the bust was never installed.

Since the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, when she received some public commissions, it was necessary to model without direct contact with the sitter, only on the basis of documentation. Such assignments included the portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven (Hradec nad Moravicí Castle), Karel Hoffmann, Archbishop of Olomouc Antonín Cyril Stojan or Jan Masaryk. Even with the living people she portrayed, she eventually grew tired of the model's stiff expression when sitting in the studio. She preferred to observe people in everyday life and to capture in memory the fleeting facial expressions that give a portrait its natural character. It is the ability to abstract characteristic facial features that makes Vlasta Prachaticka's work unique. Her latest portraits depict mostly people who are no longer alive. For the sculptor, this did not mean a limitation, but rather greater creative freedom.

Consistently working on portraits meant the need to get into the personal background and consider the nature and characteristics of the person being portrayed. This was easier in the case of people with whom she and Stanislav Kolíbal were friendly. This circle included the art historian František Matouš, who curated the exhibition of young artists at Umělecká beseda (1957), and his daughter Helena, or the painter Václav Bartovský, one of the founders of UB 12. Prachatická was always keenly interested in modern and classical classical music and her friends included some well-known musicians and composers (Pavel Bořkovec, Karel Balling). In an attempt to capture the likeness of a person as truthfully as possible, she returned to some of her portraits several years later. She first modelled a portrait of her uncle, the cellist Karel Pravoslav Sádlo, in 1961, but she later destroyed the study herself and did not reach a final portrait until 1985.

In 1953 she married the sculptor Stanislav Kolíbal. Their daughter Markéta Prachatická (born 1953), is an artist, their son Pavel Kolíbal (born 1956), is an architect.

In 1952, she took part in a joint exhibition at the Academy in Berlin and in 1957 in a joint exhibition of five artists in the Aleš Hall of the Umělecká beseda, prepared by the art historian František Matouš. In the 1960s she became a member of the UB 12 group and exhibited at all its exhibitions until 1965. The members of UB 12 mostly studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, where prevailed a freer creative spirit than at the Academy and their interest in modern art also influenced Vlasta Prachatická.

After the war, she spent a year at the Higher Industrial School of Sculpture and Stonemasonry in Hořice, where her teacher was Myslbek's pupil Prof. Jaroslav Plichta. In 1946–1951 she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in the studio of Professor Otakar Španiel. Her graduation Portrait of mother, exhibited in 1951, was purchased by the National Gallery. In 1952 she acquired an apartment in Prague 7, Nad Královskou oborou 23, which she partly used as a studio.

Vlasta Prachatická (27 November 1929 – 27 April 2022) was a Czech portrait sculptor, honorary member of the British Society of Portrait Sculptors.