In Stromovka, a playground with sculptures by Olbram Zoubek will be open

Eva Kmentová and Olbram Zoubek, children's playground in Stromovka, 1961, photo: www.praha.eu

Prague - An unusual children's playground, which is also an open-air gallery of visual art, will be reopened in the second half of September in Prague's Stromovka. The play elements were created more than 50 years ago by sculptors Olbram Zoubek and his wife Eva Kmentová. The city hall has decided to restore the sculptures representing the sculpture of the second half of the 20th century. Sculptor Jakub Grec worked on their reconstruction with the author, who passed away this June at the age of 91.

The sculptures may also showcase a lesser-known aspect of Zoubek's work, of which people admire primarily his expanded figurative sculptures adorned with gold leaf. For the geometric sculptures for the playground, he collaborated with his first wife Eva Kmentová, who was also a sculptor and passed away in 1980.

Grec, a graduate of the Prague Academy of Art, Architecture and Design, worked as an assistant to Zoubek in his studio on Salmovská Street in New Town. "The restoration of the playground was consulted with Olbram Zoubek right up to the last moment, as he was very interested in it and provided valuable advice during the restoration," Grec said today to ČTK.

The playground, now called Kaštánek, will be accessible with a warning that it does not meet today's strict standards for playgrounds and can therefore only be used at one's own risk. It is not equipped with the material that is currently placed on playgrounds to cushion falls; the intent was to restore the playground to its original form. Under the highest sculpture, which can be climbed and crawled through, sand has been poured, otherwise the surface is solid.

The sculptures, some decorated with relief drawings, will only be painted white. In past decades, students from nearby schools variously painted them, but originally they were, and will again be, monochromatic. During the reconstruction, it was first necessary to uncover the sculptures standing on metal legs from below, as a half meter of soil had accumulated in their foundations over half a century. "Everything was dug out, cranes lifted it, including the foundations, it was re-concreted, a new terrain was created, and I repaired most of the sculptures on site," says Grec. However, two were missing, which were newly made in the studio on Salmovská and brought to the park today for installation.

"This is a rare children's playground from 1961, which should also serve as an example of how to preserve the overlooked epoch in Czech visual art, when sculptors participated in interesting original realizations in public spaces. It was a space where they could create freely, even though many were prohibited from free creation at that time," he added.