1907 - 1995

Sculptor. Born in Vienna to an Austrian mother and a Czech father, he became an apprentice engraver before studying sculpture at evening classes. He then enrolled at the Vienna Academy of Fine Art (1928-34), where his teachers were H. Bitterlich and J. Műllner. His early works were mainly nude figures in the tradition of Georg Kolbe and Emil Barlach. In 1934 he was invited to spend three months at Dartington Hall in Devon, but, because of the deteriorating conditions in Vienna, he decided to stay on as a teacher there, and was much influenced by the “visionary” style of the painter Cecil Collins, and by the artistic cosmopolitanism of Dartington. During World War II he was interned in Canada, but after the war returned to Dartington, and proceeded to set up sculpture courses at the public schools, Blundells and Bryanston. In 1945 Soukop moved to London, teaching at Bromley, Guildford and Chelsea Art Schools. In 1949 and 1950 he showed work at the Battersea Park open air sculpture exhibitions. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1956. From 1969, when he was elected a Royal Academician, to 1982, he was master of sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools. Soukop worked in a variety of styles, influenced by British and European modernism, as well as by the craft traditions of Central Europe. His stone sculpture of an Owl (1961-62), after being exhibited at the Royal Academy, was purchased for the Tate Gallery through the Chantrey Bequest.