Rose Garden
Golden Gate Park
Located at the entrance to the Rose Garden just off of JFK Boulevard is this bust of Thomas Garrigue Masaryk. Masaryk was the first president of Czechoslovakia, a statesman, philosopher, liberator and humanitarian. The bust was sculpted by Josef Mařatka in 1926 and was exhibited at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exhibition on Treasure Island. It was given to the park in 1962 as a gift of the San Francisco Chapter of Sokol, a Czechoslovakian gymnastics association.
Josef Mařatka was a Czech visual artist who was born in 1874. Mařatka studied Applied arts at Celda Klouček and then under Josef Vaclav Myslberka at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1900 he worked briefly in the studio of August Rodin in Paris.
In the beginning he worked in the expressionism movement, but under the influence of Rodin he began to focus on Art Nouveau symbolism. He was later influenced by the likes of Bourdelle. After the war he tended to focus on socialist tendencies and neoclassical art. The artist died in 1937.
According to the Smithsonian the piece was originally owned by Franta Anýž. Anýž was a fascinating businessman in Czechoslavakia and this is what I found about him while reading a retrospective of his work that took place at the Municipal House in Czechoslavakia.
The name of Franta Anýž, a talented visual artist, meticulous jeweller, sought-after chaser and medal designer, excellent craftsman highly acclaimed in the first half of the twentieth century, and, finally, responsible and modern entrepreneur in the applied art industry, is nowadays perhaps only known to a group of experts.
The charismatic František Anýž (1876 – 1934) excelled with his talent and industriousness already at the School of Applied Arts in Prague where he studied with professors Celda Klouček and Emanuel Novák. With his tireless drive and thanks to his no less effective organisational capacities, he worked himself up from running a small workshop, founded in Prague in 1902, to become the owner of an esteemed art metalworking factory in the course of a single decade.
A side note – the sculpture is credited in the Smithsonian to a J. Matatka. This is incorrect and has led most everyone to continue to repeat the misspelling
He probably was an employee. A combo of artist/entrepreneur is a good one to have!