Standing Swimmer

Starting in the 1950s, the sculptures of Zdeněk Palcr displayed an obvious movement toward a simplification of form and effacement of detail from the human figure, which he gradually enhanced by flattening the bodily volume and highlighting the frontal view. In terms of form and theme, Palcr’s early work was most inspired by the sculptures by Otto Gutfreund and French figural inter-war sculpture, as we can see in the set of sculptures with the theme of a female swimmer from 1957. The sculpture Seated Woman (1914) by Raymond Duchamp-Villon was a model for this three-quarter figure of The Standing Swimmer.