Ludmila Seefried-Matějková

Ludmila Seefried-Matejková (born 13 November 1938 in Heřmanův Městec, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech sculptor and painter living in Berlin.
Biography.
Ludmila Seefried-Matějková spent her childhood and the war years in Heřmanův Městec. Her father, František Matějka, owned a sawmill, her mother, Ludmila, looked after the family, household and garden. Music, painting and literature also played an important role in their lives.
After February 1948 the family was dispossessed and her father displaced by force 250 km away from the family. Her mother and the two daughters were at the mercy of the new communist rulers. The trauma experienced during this period sharpened her awareness of injustice. In 1951, the whole family was forcibly displaced to Mariánské Lázně.
Matějková studied at sculpture class of Arts Grammar School in Prague with Prof. M. Uchytilová-Kucová (1953–1956) and made several attempts to enter university. In spite of passing examinations, she was rejected for political reasons. In between exams she undertook practical stonemason training and worked in a porcelain factory in Duchcov. After a last unsuccessful attempt in Bratislava she returned to Mariánské Lázně and worked for three years as an art teacher in Mariánské Lázně and Cheb and as a graphic artist at the Mariánské Lázně Arts Centre KaSS. At a local theatre Kruh/Circle in the arts centre she acts, sings, writes, portrays friends.
Her daughter Marketa was born in 1965, but marriage broke down and was divorced. In 1964 she submitted application for membership in the Czech Artists Association (CSVU) and during the Prague spring she grabbed opportunity to study abroad. In 1967 she was admitted to the Berlin University of the Arts (HfBK) in West Berlin, in the sculptor class of Prof. Joe Henry Lonas.
She completed studies in master class in 1973. Since then, she had been working as a freelance sculptress in Berlin. Here she met her husband Rainer-Maria Seefried, received German nationality and decided to live in Germany.
In the 1990s Ludmila Seefried-Matejková was a founding member of the Künstlersonderbundes-Realism in Germany in Berlin (1990) and of the international arts association PRO ARTE VIVENDI in Berlin and Mariánské Lázně (1998). The projects are supported by the Czech Embassy in Berlin and the Deutsch Tschechischen Zukunfts-Fonds. In 1994 she became member of the Darmstädter Sezession in Darmstadt.
She had several individual exhibitions in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Seefried-Matějková lives and works in Berlin and Malcesine.
Works.
Ludmila Seefried-Matejkova studied figure sculpture under Prof.Marie Uchytilova-Kucova in Prague. She was able to look into the abstract form under Prof. Joe Henry Lonas. Her sculptures from this period were stylized anthropomorphic or bioform constructions in plaster.
She soon realized that abstraction limits her possibilities of expression and returned to the figure sculpting. The hyper-realistic, life-size polyester figure” Hanna” (final work for master class at the HfBK 1973) marked out future direction of her sculptural works. The effect of her figural sculptures was often intensified by environment installations: "Scream" 1976, "On Edge" 1977, "Outside the Door" 1980 and others.
Since 1980 she has returned to classic materials: clay, stone and wood. She takes her subjects from life around her, the city with its variety of human characters and their fates, the social differences to the "fringes of society". A series of heads/busts of different characters, mainly in terracotta, were the "Turkish Woman" 1983, "Homeless" 1990, "Cunning Stockbroker" and "Girl at the Exhibition" 1996 and others. Her sculptures based on reality were transformed portraits of real people from everyday life, interpreted by the artist into her own sculptural language: "Beggar Woman" 1997, "Underground" 2001-2 and others. The sculpture "Father`s Hat" 1995 is a self-portrait. 
Struck by her childhood and early youth experiences, she often depicts pain, violence and aggression as important themes in her work. She employs expressive symbols: "Scream" 1976, "Strangling" 1985, "Homo homini lupus" 1992/93, and "Seed of Hatred" 1993.
The world of the human soul with its silent dramas such as self-torment, anxiety and loneliness ("Solitude" 2004) as well as internal experiences, self-awareness such as contemplation and meditation are equally reflected in her works: "Catharsis" 1979, "Meditation" 1980 and 2002. Her summer works in stone and wood were created in her Italian studio. The subjects are party biblical or influenced by her reading: "Job" 2003, "Resurrection" 2008, "Ophelia" 1997, "Kafka/Metamorphosis" 2000, "Somnambulist" 2013 and others.
Drawings were always an important part of Ludmila Seefried-Matejkova's works – from sketches in pubs, underground trains or on the beach to portraits and studies of people, mainly in pencil, charcoal, pastel or pen-and-ink.
As a representative of realism, which has quite a tradition in Germany, Ludmila Seefried-Matejkova was successful in several "Kunst am Bau" competitions "Justice" 1984, "Double-Admiral" 1985, "The Dance on the Volcano" 1988 and several other sculptural objects in the cityscape of Berlin.