Hugo Uher

HUGO UHER (Karlovy Vary, 1882-PRAGA, 1945).
Pair of Art Nouveau vases, ca. 1905.
Polychrome terracotta.
With signatures and numbering on the base.
It has some slight scratches.
Measurements: 46 x 25 x 21 cm.

Pair of Art Nouveau vases, work of Hugo Uher. They are framed within the Austrian Jugendstil, also called Secession. Made in ceramic, they are decorated in the mouth with a maiden worked in round bulk that collects bunches of grapes. Vine leaves cover the mouth and shoulders of the vessels.

Hugo Uher was an Austrian sculptor, later Czechoslovakian, who worked mainly in Karlovy Vary. He studied at the professional ceramics school in Bechin, where he graduated in 1899. He then entered the School of Applied Arts in Prague, under the direction of Stanislav Sucharda. He completed his studies there in 1906 and moved on to the Berlin and Rudolstadt art academies in Schwarzburg, as well as traveling to Rome and Venice. Upon his return to Karlovy Vary, he established his own sculpture studio, where he worked for some 60 years. Among his major commissions were the tombstone of hotelier Karl Pupp at the Karlovy Vary cemetery in 1906 and the construction of the mausoleum of Dutch Consul General Pohl in Raspenava, northern Bohemia. In 1909 he received the prize of the Association of German Creative Artists of Bohemia for a ceramic sculpture. His monument to Ludwig van Beethoven in Karlovy Vary also became famous.