Helen Zelezny-Scholz - Life

Life

Zelezny was born in Chropyně, in the Czech Republic, and raised in the village of Třebovice, now part of the city of Ostrava, Austrian Silesia. Helena Železná-Scholzová grew up at the family château owned by her mother, the German writer Countess Maria Stona, who frequently received intellectual and creative personalities from all over Europe. She studied drawing in Vienna and Dresden, and sculpture in Berlin under Fritz Heinemann, as well as for four years in Brussels under Charles van der Stappen. Van der Stappen was a portrait and decorative sculptor, as Zelezny was. In 1912, in Ostrava, she organized an exhibition of his works.

After one year of study in Paris, she settled down in Florence, Italy. From 1909 to 1913 she learned a lot from Augusto Giacometti with whom she traveled to his native home in Switzerland. She was also in regular contact with artists Hans Kestranek de:Hans Kestranek, Edward Gordon Craig and Julius Rolshoven. In 1913 she stayed for a long time in Tunis. While there she visited the Musselmen harems and become acquainted with their inmates and customs, which she portrayed in her sculptural work.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, she moved to Vienna, where she took a position resembling that of a court sculptor, sculpting portraits of members of the Imperial family, including Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma. Returning in 1919 to Italy, having in the interval married Colonel Zelezny, she worked at first in Florence, then later in Rome. There, she also taught sculpture to children. She had her studio at Via Margutta No. 54 from 1922 until her death in 1974, usually spending the summer months in her native country. After the Second World War, she wanted to donate the family château in Třebovice to the Czechoslovak government in order to create a centre for young artists. But postwar fate had other plans for the château, and by the end of the 1950s the building was in utter ruins.

In 1934, Helena Železná-Scholzová thrilled the Parisian public with an exhibition at Jean Charpentier’s prestigious gallery. The sculptural group “Work Days and Holidays” received the greatest attention.

She also lived in the United States for a short time, from 1946 to 1949, where she taught mixed media at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Swarthmore College, among other institutions in and around Philadelphia. From 1949 until her death she had regular classes in her old studio in Rome. Here she taught at her own sculpting school, attended by students from the world over. She was considered a teacher who could awaken artistic talent in almost anyone. To the end of her life she abounded with enviable energy, and had no problem speaking with her students in English, Italian, French, and German. Just a few days before her death in Rome she had a lesson in modeling.

Her works include more than 300 portraits in marble, bronze and terracotta (busts, reliefs and statuettes). Several of these sculptures were destroyed during the Second World War, among these being the great central altar representing the life of Hedwig of Silesia in the Church dedicated to that saint in Opava in the historical capital of Czech Silesia. In 1973 she wrote a book title My dear Pupils, which showcases the work of some of her students. She was commissioned at one point to sculpt a monument to those who died in the First World War. Her work has been exhibited in international exhibitions in Berlin and Vienna (1907), in Rome in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery (1932), and in Paris.

Helene Scholz-Zelezny died in Rome 1974 and is buried at the Protestant Cemetery.