Celda Klouček (born Celestýn Klouček; 6 December 1855,

Senomaty Senomaty is a market town in Rakovník District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 1,300 inhabitants. Administrative parts The villages of Hostokryje and Nouzov are administrative parts of Senomaty. Geography Senom ...

– 14 October 1935,

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

) was a Czech sculptor, designer, teacher, and

paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

Life and work

He began his studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, then transferred to the

School of Applied Arts A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compuls ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. There, he worked in the studios of from 1878 to 1881. In addition to his studio work, he taught decorative sculpting at the

Kunstgewerbeschule A Kunstgewerbeschule (English: ''School of Arts and Crafts'' or S''chool of Applied Arts'') was a type of vocational arts school that existed in German-speaking countries from the mid-19th century. The term Werkkunstschule was also used for thes ...

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

. From 1888 to 1916, he was a professor at his alma mater in Prague; overseeing a studio for decorative drawing and modeling. He was also involved in the ceramics studio, and worked together with Professor Emanuel Novák (1866–1918) in the Academy's artistic metal program. Since he was a young boy, he had collected minerals and

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

s. Through his own studies, and collaborations with the paleontologists at the

National Museum A national museum is a museum maintained and funded by a national government. In many countries it denotes a museum run by the central government, while other museums are run by regional or local governments. In other countries a much greater numb ...

, he developed into a knowledgeable researcher; publishing his own discoveries in the professional journals. His works were mostly decorative and ornamental pieces, done in bas-relief. They are largely within the style of

Historicism Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying their history, that is, by studying the process by which they came about. The term is widely u ...

, primarily

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

and

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

. He also designed

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

pieces for interiors and exteriors, fireplace masks and lamps, as well as other

arts and crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

items. Around 1900, he began designing in the

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

style and exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. After

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, he went into semi-retirement, taking only small, private, commissions.

Selected projects

His works, and works by his students, based on his designs, have been preserved throughout Prague,

Plzeň Plzeň (; German and English: Pilsen, in German ) is a city in the Czech Republic. About west of Prague in western Bohemia, it is the Statutory city (Czech Republic), fourth most populous city in the Czech Republic with about 169,000 inhabita ...

, and Vienna. * Building of the former Zemská Banka, by

Osvald Polívka Osvald Polívka (24 May 1859 in Enns – 30 April 1931 in Prague) was an Austrian-born Czech architect associated with the Art Nouveau period in Prague. Polívka designed many of Prague's significant landmarks of the era, plus other work in Brno ...

* Building of the former Prague Municipal Credit Union, by Antonín Wiehl * Head office of the

Prague Credit Bank Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate oc ...

* , today the seat of the Apostolic Nunciature. * Decorations at the in Plzeň * Decorations in the Imperial Suites at the

Hofburg The Hofburg is the former principal imperial palace of the Habsburg dynasty. Located in the centre of Vienna, it was built in the 13th century and expanded several times afterwards. It also served as the imperial winter residence, as Schönbrunn ...

Sources

* ''Celda Klouček, sochař, návrhář, paleontolog'': Exhibition catalog for his 155th anniversary, West Bohemian Museum, Plzeň, 2010 *

Jaroslav Perner Jaroslav Perner (March 28, 1869 in Týnec nad Labem – June 9, 1947 in Prague) was a Czech paleontologist. In 1927 Perner became professor of paleontology at the Charles University in Prague. He continued in work started by Joachim Barrande (th ...

, ''Celda Klouček paleontolog'', , Prague, 1937
Online

External links

Works by and about Klouček
@ the

National Library of the Czech Republic The National Library of the Czech Republic ( cs, Národní knihovna České republiky) is the central library of the Czech Republic. It is directed by the Ministry of Culture. The library's main building is located in the historical Clementinum b ...

Mgr. Bronislava Bubeníčková: ''Přínos Celdy Kloučka české keramické tvorbě na přelomu 19. a 20''
(The Contribution of Celda Klouček to Czech Ceramic Art at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries), Bachelor's thesis (2010) @ MUNI, Brno
Entry for Klouček
@ AbART {{DEFAULTSORT:Kloucek, Celda 1855 births 1935 deaths Czech sculptors Czech architectural sculptors Czech paleontologists People from Rakovník District Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague alumni Sculptors from Austria-Hungary