Jindřich Severa

Jindřich Severa came from a family of Italian origin and was a Czech painter and sculptor. He studied at the Technical University in Praha and, under Otakar Spaniel, at the Art Academy. At the beginning of World War II, he taught at a secondary school in Vyšehrad, and from 1945 until his retirement as a lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture and Decorative Arts. During the German occupation, he was in the resistance movement. Severa produced the relief portrait of A.B. Svojsíka on the memorial at Štěchovice. He also designed some coins and medals for the Czech authorities.

Severa also designed a wooden crucifix and presented it to Coventry in 1968. He carved it during World War II, using a typical Slovak peasant style. His Czech Cross left Czechoslovakia just a few weeks before the Russian troops entered the country in the summer of 1968. Severa also owned one of the largest private libraries in the country. After his five-year-old son was run over by a train in the 1950s, he never went to bed again. A flood of the Berounka river destroyed much of his work in his studio in Řevnice.