Albin Polasek - Career

Career

Born as Albín Polášek in Frenštát, Moravia (now Czech Republic), Polasek apprenticed as a wood carver in Vienna. At the age of 22 he emigrated to the United States and began formal art training at age 25 under Charles Grafly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. As a student, he first produced Man Carving His Own Destiny (1907) and Eternal Moment (1909). In 1909, Polasek became an American citizen; in 1910, he won the Prix de Rome competition; in 1913, he received honorable mention at the Paris Salon for "The Sower;" in 1915, he took the Widener Gold Medal from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for his sculpture "Aspiration."

At age 37, after periods of residence in Rome and New York City, he was invited to head the sculpture department at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he remained for nearly thirty years. While there he created the original Forest Idyll; "Victorious Christ" for St. Cecelia's Cathedral in Omaha, Nebraska; Kenilworth Memorial relief, Kenilworth, Illinois; "The Spirit of Music" in Grant Park in Chicago; the "Woodrow Wilson Memorial in Prague, Czech Republic; Governor Richard Yates sculpture, capital grounds, Springfield, Illinois; and many other works. Polasek was elected an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design in 1927, and full member in 1933.

Albin Polasek was a close friend of fellow artist Louis Grell while he lived at Tree Studios in Chicago. The Grell Family archive collection contains letters by Grell discussing Polasek's move to Florida and becoming ill shortly after.

In 1950, Polasek retired at age 70 to Winter Park, Florida. Within months he suffered a stroke that left his left side paralyzed; he subsequently completed eighteen major works with his right hand only, including "Victory of Moral Law," the artist's comment on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Towards the end of 1950,at age 71, he married former student Ruth Sherwood who died 22 months later in October, 1952. In 1961, Polasek married Emily Muska Kubat. Upon his death in 1965, Polasek was buried beside his first wife in Winter Park's Palm Cemetery, where his 12th Station of the Cross (1939) is his monument. Emily M. K. Polasek died in 1988.