Soaring

The sculpture Soaring was designed in the late 1960s by sculptor and mountaineer Valerián Karoušek, a native of Turnov in northern Bohemia. In 1970 Karoušek met a tragic end during a mountain climbing expedition in Peru. After his death, his fellow-sculptor and friend, Jiří Novák, undertook the realization of Karoušek’s original concept. Working with architect Stanislav Hubička, Novák completed the sculpture’s structural design, before assembling the work from five parts in 1972, in a site at the turn of the road to Prague’s Ruzyně Airport. The monumental abstract sculpture is made up of a grey-black, gold-striped all-metal structure.

In 2013 Soaring was declared a classified object of cultural heritage, as a prominent example of sculptural work of the second half of the 20th century installed in public space. Still in the same year, the sculpture’s state of serious disrepair led to its disassembly. Its reconstruction and restoration is currently being executed by sculptor Andrej Šembera. Soaring is expected to be returned to its original site later in the year 2023.