Sailor

Bedřich Stefan did his figure of The Sailor as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he studied in the studio of Jan Štursa. He was most influenced, however, by the sculpture civility of Otto Gutfreund, which is characterized by a tendency toward pragmatism and a primitivism of form. The sculpture is also in line with the poetic naivism of the beginnings of the Devětsil art group in whose First Springtime Exhibition Stefan participated in 1922. The themes, such as travelling, transatlantic voyage, exotic locales and adventures in distant lands are typical of the Devětsil avant-garde’s poetism; they are also embodied in the motif of a sailor, a popular theme in the art and poetry of the 1920s.