Life and Work
Stanislav Hanzik was born in Most - a city in the northern Czech Republic - on July 24, 1931. During the Nazi occupation (1938-1945) his family had to leave the Czech/German border region and moved closer to Prague, to Rakovnik, where Stanislav entered the Gymnasium (equivalent to a High School). In Rakovnik, he created his first colored terra cottas. In 1945, Stanislav returned with his parents to Most where he received his "Matura" (at the level of a High School graduate) and made the acquaintance with his future wife Kveta. After a year's study at the Pedagogical Faculty of Charles University under the supervision of the Czech sculptor Karel Lidicky, he enrolled in studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague under the guidance of the well known Czech sculptor Jan Lauda. He graduated in 1956 and was given the opportunity for another year's honorary study at the same school. In 1957, he rented a part of a house in Mala Strana, one of the historic districts of Prague, and established there his studio where he works to this day.
At that time he was working on sculptures which predestined the future orientation of his work. These include, among others, Simeon (Old Man and Child), the terra cotta sculpture Gorgon-Hiroshima, Welder, and Miner. He began presenting his works in 1959 at exhibitions held by the North Bohemian Branch of the Union of Fine Artists. In 1961, he was accepted as a postgraduate student at the Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of the sculptor Vincenc Makovsky and his sculpture Welder was selected that year for the Czech exhibition at the "Biennale de la Jeunesse" in Paris. He was awarded, in direct international competition, the main sculpture prize. This achievement got him also a stipend which enabled him to study in France at the "Ecole des Beaux Arts" in Paris where he took the opportunity and joined the highly regarded studios of Ossip Zadkine and Henri Adam. In his own studio in Paris he began his by now large series of dialogues and torsos. These first pieces were subsequently exposed during his first solo exhibition in the "Maison de la Culture" in Le Havre in 1963. After the return from France, in 1964, he continued his postgraduate studies and simultaneously taught modeling to students of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts. 1967 saw his first exhibition in Prague at the "Galerie Nova Sin" (New Hall Gallery). He also accepted an offer from Karel Lidicky to become his assistant at the Academy. By this time, he had already held solo exhibitions in other Czech cities, such as Litomerice, Most, Ostrava, Hradec Kralove, Jicin and elsewhere. He was given a major commission for the diorite sculptures for the Lion Fountain (the lion is the Czech national symbol) in front of the historical Carolinum building of Charles University in Prague.
Stanislav Hanzik continued producing other works throughout the sixties (for example, a portrait of the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana and the sculptures Torso, Danae, Impaled Lion, etc.) in which he cultivated the fundamental approach of his artistic expression as a firm base from which he draws his ideas to this day (for additional theoretical thoughts, see also the commentary by Cisarovsky). In spring 1968, he habilitated to become senior lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague to which he was appointed in 1970.
The seventies were characterized chiefly by work on portraits and on his Game of Chess. His success during an anonymous competition held to appoint an artist for the design of the interior of the rotunda on the Rip Mountain (a monument of prime national importance celebrating the arrival of Czechs into the region during the 9th century) led to the marly limestone sculpture The Good Shepherd. During the later seventies, he was also successful in another competition, this time for a large marly limestone relief for the Memorial for the liberation of the city of Ostrava at the end of the Second World War. Finally, he was also chosen on the basis of a competitive selection, to create a sculpture for the National Theater in the Ursuline Gardens in Prague, for which he created the sandstone sculptural group Discourse.
During the late eighties, Stanislav Hanzik won the commission to design the atrium in the Parliament Building; here, he carved the sandstone sculpture Lion with Snake and also designed the decoration for the building's front. This period also saw the artist working on the diorite sculpture Horse, as a symbol of homeland, for the spa park at Teplice, and he finished a bronze sculpture to honor the Czech poet Karel Hynek Macha which was placed in front of the House of Culture in the city of Litomerice.
In 1988, he was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, a position which he left two years later after a dispute with the new management over the conception of the Academy's education and artistic program. He was invited to become a member of the re-established Manes Art Association (Josef Manes was an important Czech painter during the 19th century) in 1990 where, as its acting secretary, he is currently placing his energies into re-formulating the Association's program and resolving issues of restitution. He participates in all member and club activities. In 1991, at the request of the University of Ostrava, he founded, as a part of the Pedagogical Faculty, the Department of Art with an integrated multimedia program. He headed the modeling studio until 1996 after which he left his teaching career in order to dedicate himself purely to his own work.
In 1993, he completed a monumental sandstone sculpture entitled "The Orant Traversed the Thirteenth Chamber..." for the district Nove Butovice in Prague, and mascarons of the Czech composers Bedrich Smetana, Antonin Dvorak, Leos Janacek, and Bohuslav Martinu for the Opera House in Usti nad Labem. In 1995, the management of the National Theater in Prague requested that his actor portraits of Rudolf Hrusinsky and Josef Kemr be placed in the Actor's Hall near the presidential box. During the latter half of the nineties, he worked on several reliefs incorporating the themes of birth and death (e.g., The Gift, The Sacrifice).
During the last decade, Stanislav Hanzik organized exhibition in Usti nad Labem (Emil Filla Gallery, in 1993), in Havirov (1995), in the Castle of Liben in Prague (1995), and in Tyn nad Vltavou (1996), followed by a number of exhibitions in 1997: in the gallery "U prstenu", the "Malostranska beseda", the Vincent Kramar Gallery, all in Prague, and in the presbytery of the Augustian Monastery in Roudnice nad Labem. He participated in a symposium in 1996 at the marly limestone quarry in Hredle which resulted in the sculptures The Release of Prometheus, Dangerous Bird, Tribute to Mannerism, and Tribute to Malinsky, among others. A year later, he participated in another sculptor symposium in Horice for which he created Krkonose Fair that remained on permanent display as part of the local open-air museum. 1997 saw the completion of the Pilgrim and installation of two monumental sculptures, one a statue for the historical town square in Roudnice nad Labem, in memoriam and to celebrate the millennium of St Adalbert, and the second a stone stele bearing a portrait of Jaroslav Seifert (Czech poet and Nobel Prize winner in literature) in Kralupy nad Vltavou.
In 1998, Hanzik finished the Queen, a memorial sculpture of St.Vaclav
for Pribram, and in the rue Val-de-Grace in Paris, they unveiled his memorial
relief plate for Alfons Mucha, a Czech
painter and one of the founders of the Art Nouveau style. In summer 1999,
he was awarded the "Jean Masson Davidson Medal" for his portrait of the
Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal at the occasion
of an exhibition hosted by the London Society of Portrait Sculptors. An
important selection of his work was recently shown during an exhibition
in the Liechtenstein Palace in Prague in 1998.
At present, Stanislav Hanzik continues his work, currently a portrait of
the abbot A. Opasek, in his studios in Krizatky (Krusne Hory mountains)
and in Mala Strana in Prague.
The artist's address: Prof. Stanislav Hanzik,
Tomasska 4, 110 00 Prague 1, The Czech Republic