Albin Polasek

Albin Polasek (February 14, 1879 – May 19, 1965) was a Czech-American sculptor and educator. He created more than four hundred works during his career, two hundred of which are now displayed in the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens in Winter Park, Florida.

Born as Albín Polášek in Frenštát, Moravia, part of the Austria-Hungary (now in the 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 Rome Prize 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.

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