Karlovy Vary, West Bohemia, May 3 (CTK) – Sculptor Tomas Bosambo is completing an equestrian statue of the first Czechoslovak President Tomas Garrigue Masaryk (1918-35) made of sand in Karlovy Vary, at the spa town’s Mill Colonnade.
The more than three-metre-high statue ought to be finished by this weekend for the opening of the spa season. It is to mark the 100th anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s foundation. Because of its material, it will last several months only.
The sculptor has been shaping the statue since last Thursday.
“It is almost three and a half metres in height, so it is above life-size. Due to the static properties of sand, I had to attach a kind of shrubbery at the bottom, because I couldn’t cut an opening under the horse as the sand wouldn’t last. It is moulded out of approximately nine cubic metres of sand, so it weighs around 18 tonnes,” Bosambo said.
Making the horse’s head presented another obstacle for the sculptor since a sand head would not last when held loose in the air. Bosambo resolved this by choosing a circus-like pose, in which the horse presses the head on its chest.
Bosambo made sand statues for Karlovy Vary already in the previous years, including a statue of 14th-century emperor Charles IV or a statue for the town’s “Karlovy Vary in motion” theme last year.
The statue of Masaryk will cost the town 150,000 crowns.
Although the sculptor guarantees his sand sculptures to last about three months, they may last seven to eight months in fact, as attested in the past years. The sculptures’ life span can be shortened by intensive rains or hail or vandals who damage their surface.
