His sculpture The Wounded, inspired by the death of young soldier who was shot in the head would become a classic of the genre. A oeuvre was also marked by his enchantment with womanhood and he returned to the theme soon after the war. In 1918 he created the sculpture Gifts of Heaven and Earth, which is sometimes described as the “sister” of The Wounded. Whereas in the latter work he depicted a dying youth in free fall, in which can be felt the weight and lightness of human being, in the later work he captures, by contrast, the slender, delicate and tender body of a girl, her arms held out in the gesture of an orant ingenuously offering the gifts of heaven and earth and glorifying youth. Štursa‘s post-war works marked a return to more classical form. Among his last monumental works was The Fall of Icarus (1920), which was a reaction to the tragic death of Milan Rastislav Štefánik.
The Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava is funded by the Moravian-Silesian Region.
