Arpád Račko

Biography

In 1959 a statue called “The Marathoner” appeared in Košice, one of the first large works by the twenty-eight-year-old sculptor. It stands on Peace Marathon Square, named after the city’s famous race, and remains the work for which Arpád Račko is most readily recognised.

He was born on 17 July 1930 in Szolnok, Hungary, into a family that later ended up in Košice. He finished secondary school there, and in 1951 entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, in the studio of Professor Jan Lauda. Among his teachers are also named Július Bukovinský, Ľudovít Feld and Ján Mathé. He studied alongside Stanislav Hanzík. After completing the course in 1956, Račko was granted an “honorary year” at the academy for his talent, and only after it did he return to Košice. The influence of Josef Václav Myslbek and Jan Štursa, two founders of twentieth-century Czech sculpture, is visible in his work, and his circle of teachers goes some way to explain it. In 1957 he made a figure of Jánošík, 240 centimetres high, and in 1958 a portrait of the poet Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav. After “The Marathoner” (1959) came a portrait of the Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila (1960). Other works of those years include “Poetry”, “Morning”, “Adolescent”, and the reliefs “Day and Night”, “Sun” and “Moon”. From 1960 to 1967 Račko belonged to the artists’ group Život (“Life”).

The 1960s for him are tied to Košice’s industry and mining: “Heart”, “Reason”, “Miner”, reliefs in coloured metals, and a sculptural environment for the permanent mining exhibition at the Technical Museum. Later came memorial plaques (to Martin Kukučín, Karol Murgaš and Emil Króno), medals, portrait reliefs, “Daedalus and Icarus” (1974), a memorial in Krompachy (1981) and a memorial to Pavol Horov (1983). In 1987 he made a five-metre monument to Lenin. Račko was made a Merited Artist in 1980 and a National Artist of Czechoslovakia in 1988.

In the 1990s he undertook the reconstruction of the monumental sculpture of Aurora at the top of the State Theatre building in Košice (1993–1995), and in 1998 he received the medal of the City of Košice. For the city he also made a bronze sculpture of its coat of arms on Hlavná Street, installed in 2002 for the 500th anniversary of the charter granting the arms. He devoted much effort to painted portraits as well, depicting acquaintances and figures from Košice’s cultural and public life: the actress Mária Kráľovičová, President Rudolf Schuster and the city’s mayor Richard Raši.

His sculptural group “Music and Poetry” became Slovakia’s gift to the United Nations: in September 2012 President Ivan Gašparovič presented it after his address to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Račko’s works are in major Slovak museums and galleries, and in private collections in the Czech Republic, France, Russia, Switzerland, Poland, the United States, Sweden, Germany, England and Canada.

Arpád Račko died in Košice on 2 January 2015.