Wax heart honouring Havel to be installed in Prague centre on Friday

Prague, Feb 6 (CTK) - The Heart for Vaclav Havel, a two-metre-high sculpture made of candles that people lit in memory of the late former Czech president Havel last December, will be installed at the National Theatre's piazzetta in Prague centre on Friday, artist Lukas Gavlovsky told CTK yesterday.

Gavlovsky has created the sculpture along with Roman Svejda.

The artists started casting the wax sculpture shaped like a heart that Havel used to attach to his signature in Prague's Trafacka culture centre on January 20.

The sculpture, which is to weigh over two tonnes, has been completed in the National Theatre's cellar, Gavlovsky said.

The authors have chosen the form of an open heart that will enable people to enter its interior. They are to lay the wax heart's foundation stone in early morning hours on Friday, Gavlovsky noted.

"We will officially unveil the heart at 17:00 on Friday," he said.

The ceremony will be accompanied by a dance and music performance.

If temperature allows it, the sculpture will remain at the piazzetta until April 10.

"We are proud of the fact that this sculpture that embodies the genuine essence of Havel's philosophy will be installed here, symbolically in the very physical centre of the National Theatre," its director Ondrej Cerny said.

The artists announced that they would like to turn the candles into a giant heart after the municipal authorities started cleaning commemorative places in Prague. They were founded spontaneously in the city centre, for instance, at Wenceslas Square, in reaction to Havel's death.

Havel, former dissident, playwright and the last Czechoslovak and the first Czech president (1989-2003), died in his country house in Hradecek, east Bohemia, on December 18, 2011, aged 75 years.

Thousands of people paid their last respects to him in a mourning march and a funeral ceremony on December 23.