Her daughter Nora experienced a dramatic escape from the communist bloc at the age of ten. A random English couple transported the sculptor’s three children to Italy via Yugoslavia. “We got sunglasses, a hat, English children’s magazines and we didn’t have to say anything because none of us could speak English. And that’s how we got out, “describes the sculptor’s daughter Nora Partridge.
After a nerve-wracking passage through the rain across the border from Italy to France, Sedlecká had to wait in Paris before the then man would arrange a visa for her in England. Stefan Drexler, as a former soldier of the Czechoslovak army in exile, had contacts from the war in England. In France, she hid her three children, and every 14 days she went to the police to ask for an extension, saying that the art in Paris was so beautiful that she could not leave.
–
According to her, the beginnings in London were lost years for her. She could barely speak English. She made a living making souvenirs for the British Museum. A divorce followed. As a Czech immigrant, she had to support three children herself.
“I have never applied for any social security benefits from the British state. Nobody asked us to come. We did it on our own initiative, they accepted us, so I had to work, “she described in an interview with the artist Alexandra Mir, why she also rejected the offer of social housing and preferred to pay her own mortgage and work from morning to night, including weekends.
Freddie was not the most important statue to her
Sedlecká had nothing to show in England after the escape, she didn’t even take photos. At least her French friends smuggled a statue of God is dead.
“She had a fantastic success with the communist regime. They thought it was a critique of Christianity, a reference to the work So Said Zarathustra by the German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche. In fact, and those who know the work understand it, it was a critique of the new god. She expressed disillusionment and started planning an escape, “says the curator of her studio Peter Cannon-Brookes.
The new god was the socialist regime, Sedlecká said. The sculpture, created at the time of the criticism of the communist dictators Stalin and Gottwald, marked the end of the old and the beginning of the new for her.
–
