Wind Joseph Jurča

He was born in Paris to a Slovak mother, Maria, who went there to work. They lived on the Chevalier du Barre street below Montmartre, from 1929 with their father. After his parents married, he was given his father's surname Jurča. Until 1936, he attended elementary school in Paris. Before the outbreak of the war, the family moved to Slovakia and he completed folk and bourgeois school in Trnava. His decision to study sculpture was influenced by the Trnava sculptor Ján Koniarek, who was his first teacher. Joseph Jurča was a member of the Association of Visual Artists of Western Slovakia (ZVUZS) and the Slovak Art Union. He regularly participated in collective exhibitions.

From 1941 to 1943, he studied at the Vocational Ceramic School in Modra.5 From 1945 to 1946, he graduated from the Secondary Industrial School of Construction in Bratislava. Subsequently, in 1946-1948 he attended the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Bratislava. Between 1948 and 1953 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, studio of monumental sculpture under professors Bedřich Stefan and Jan Kavan. Between 1953 and 1954 he completed his basic military service in the Auxiliary Technical Camp Mimoň (Czech Republic).

He was active as a teacher, he was the founder of the art department at the Folk School of Art in Trnava. Since 1980 he also led the adult art circle at this school, which continued later in his studio on Kapitulská Street. Between 1954 and 1957 he taught at the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Bratislava, between 1957 and 1963 at the Pedagogical Faculty in Trnava, between 1965 and 1986 at the People's School of Arts in Trnava.

After his studies he worked and created in Trnava, his works can also be found in other towns in Slovakia (Piešt'any, Galanta, Stará Ľubovňa, Nové Zámky). He realized monumental works in exterior, artistic additions to the interior of architectures, chamber sculptures, designs of plaques and medals, paintings and ex-librises. He has made dozens of study tours in Europe. He actively participated in the cultural and artistic life of Trnava. He was devoted to chamber art from the very beginning of his career, and after changing his studio in 1980 he exhibited intensively and regularly in chamber cycles.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Jurča