Lot 87

Otto Gutfreund (1889 - 1927) A FRENCH LEGIONNAIRE

This statue of a French legionnaire, exhausted and leaning on the barrel of his gun, is a convincing example of interwar Civilism. Gutfreund started his series of Russian, French and Italian legionnaires shortly before the middle of the 1920s as a commission for the former Monument to the Resistance. This sculpture shows a soldier from the “Nazdar” company, the first Czechoslovak military unit operating in French territory during World War I.

As a great patriot, Gutfreund volunteered for the Foreign Legion in France and participated in the bloody battles on the Somme River, in L’Artois and in Champagne. In the autumn of 1915, he and three other members of the Nazdar company led the Czech and Slovak resistance to the to the Bérengér law that would have dissolved the Nazdar company. Gutfreund was subsequently imprisoned in France several times and lived in the country in destitute circumstances until 1920.