Franta Belsky

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Franta Belsky was a Czech sculptor.

He was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1921, the son of the economist Joseph Belsky. With his family, he fled to England after the German invasion, and volunteered for the Czech Exile Army. He fought in France as a gunner and was twice mentioned in dispatches.

He returned to Prague after the war to find that many of his relations had perished in the Holocaust. He designed a Paratroop memorial, and a medal in honour of Emil Zatopek, before fleeing again to escape the Communist takeover on 1948.

His work includes, not only traditional statues and busts, but also large-scale more abstract works. He produced a number of statues of Winston Churchill, one in Fulton, Missouri. His Royal busts are in the National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom), his Admiral Cunningham in Trafalgar Square and Mountbatten in Horseguards, in London.

In 1944 he married Margaret Owen the cartoonist and after her death, Irena Sedlecka in 1996. He sculpted two busts of President Truman before dying on the 5th July 2000

Unfortunately, the Churchill Papers website has his death dated incorrectly; his family recall seeing him very much alive beyond 1972!