Otto Gutfreund

[3] Gutfreund discovered the works of the French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle during his 1909 exhibition in Prague organized by the artistic group SVU Mánes.

[5] In 1912 Gutfreund became a member of Skupina výtvarných umělců (Group of Creative Artists) in Prague and exhibited there his first cubo-expressionist sculpture Úzkost (Anxiety).

[citation needed] At the declaration of the First World War Gutfreund was in Paris and decided to join the French Foreign Legion.

The following year Gutfreund was made a professor of architectural sculpture at the Umělecko-průmyslová škola (College of Decorative Arts) in Prague and took part in the Société Anonyme exhibition in New York City.

[7] Jiří Kotalík, Director of the National Gallery in Prague, wrote in 1979: Otto Gutfreund is one of the few Czech artists whose work is of significance not only in his home setting but internationally.

He was greatly conscious of the contemporary problems in European sculpture at a decisive stage of development, and he made an original contribution towards their solution.