On Dec. 11, Radoslav L. Sutnar—architect, regional development expert, cultural patron, son of Ladislav Sutnar—died in Los Angeles. I spent time with him when I was researching his father’s life, and he was a warm and generous soul. “Rado” also introduced me to Doc. Josef Mištera, founder and director emeritus of the Ladislav Sutnar Fakulty of Design and Arts, and current director of the Foundation of Radoslav and Elaine Sutnar. The following obituary was written by Mištera and is published here in an edited version with permission.
Radoslav L. Sutnar was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on July 25, 1929, to parents Františka Sutnarová and Ladislav Sutnar. He was their second child.
A happy childhood in the family of a visual artist, designer and educator successful on the European scene was clouded by the atmosphere of the approaching German occupation and World War II. When Rad was 10 years old, his father emigrated to the USA after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Hitler. Františka and the boys were supposed to escape through Poland, but the Second World War started, so Radoslav and his brother and mother remained imprisoned in the German protectorate. Because his father actively cooperated with the government-in-exile of his country, the sword of Damocles in the form of the Gestapo hung over his family until the end of the war.
After the war, the family contacted Ladislav, who lived and worked in New York, where they arrived in 1946. The family originally thought they would return to their homeland, but Czechoslovakia was leaning towards the Soviet Union, which resulted in a communist coup in 1948. They decide to stay in the U.S., where Radoslav began his studies.
He received bachelor and master’s degrees from Pratt’s College of Architecture. Afterward, Radoslav received a scholarship to Harvard, where in 1958 he received the Master in City Planning (MCP) degree. At the same time, he attended MIT to study history, planning, law and economic development of underdeveloped countries. After graduation, he remained in Boston and worked as an architect-planner for several firms (Cabot, Cabot & Forbes). One of his projects was Technology Square, an office and research incubator next to MIT in Cambridge.
He joined the State University of New York construction fund, which was responsible for the planning, design and construction of 22 SUNY campuses. Then, “he was called by California,” where he began working on economic and financial studies, first at the DMJM firm, then joined UCLA in associate research at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning. His task was to work on a new master plan for the city of Los Angeles. From design, he gradually moved to consulting in the field of territorial development. It wasn’t until well into middle age that he found the love of his life. It was Elaine Ford, and they agreed to marry secretly “for a trial.” As it turned out, it was a perfect partnership for decades—for the rest of their lives.
After the death of Ladislav Sutnar in November 1976, Radoslav took care of his estate, which he arranged and distributed in a number of memorial institutions.
I met Radoslav in 2011. I wanted his permission to give the name Ladislav Sutnar to the gallery I ran, and especially to the faculty of design I founded and built in his native Pilsen. In our email communication, Radoslav agreed to name the gallery after his father, and we opened it with an exhibition of Rauschenberg prints. Rado was very satisfied.
I told him I was going to build a building for my new faculty and he jumped up and said, “Hold on, I’ll call Frank!”
“Frank? What Frank?” I asked.
“Well, Frank Gehry, he’ll build it for you.”
But it was too late—the building was already under construction, so Rado and I inaugurated it a year later.
Radoslav, Elaine and I immediately fell in love with each other and he started calling me brother. “I wanted a brother like you,” he said. With mutual trust we worked on Return of Ladislav Sutnar, which helped to correct Czech cultural history, from which Ladislav Sutnar had been erased by the communists. There have been a series of Sutnar exhibitions, and a number of books have been published about him (including a children’s book written by Steven Heller).
The remains of Ladislav Sutnar and his wife eventually returned from a cemetery in New York to an honorable grave in their hometown.
Together with Radoslav, we founded the Ladislav Sutnar Prize, for which representatives of world-famous institutions and personalities involved in design come every year, such as Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Bauhaus Universität Weimar, ArsElectronica Linz, HIT Holon Institute of Technology, Milton Glaser, Warren Lehrer, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Taiwan Design Center, Seymour Chwast, prof. Victor Margolin, Richard Saul Wurman, Pratt Institute, prince William Lobkowicz, AIGA, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art, Steven Heller, The J. Paul Getty Trust, Cooper – Hewitt National Design Museum a jiní.
The Radoslav and Elaine Sutnar Foundation was launched, which supports the development of design and its teaching, and which owns its [Suntar’s] copyright.
At the initiative of Radoslav L. Sutnar, the Archives of American Art sent 26 boxes of Ladislav Sutnar’s archives to the faculty, so that his archive could be set up for doctoral students to study. Radoslav donated several of his father’s works to the city of Pilsen, and donated 25 paintings of Venus to the faculty so that a permanent exhibition of Ladislav Sutnar could be established.
We did all these things and more together with absolute mutual trust. When we gave our word, it was like a contract. Radoslav was pleased with how our projects were going and called me “Miracle maker.” Of course, I was very pleased with the praise from my older brother.
Rado and Elaine seem to have merged into one being. When she became seriously ill, he devotedly cared for her until the end, and when she died, life lost its meaning for Rado. He was also struck by the fact that the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, which he helped to build, were reduced to ashes in large-scale fires. Nevertheless, until the end of his days, he energetically managed his life and organized his last things and his “departure” with a cool head.
Radoslav had a warm relationship with his father’s hometown, and at the end of his life he expressed a wish to be buried there near his parents. I am glad that the paths of our lives met, that I got to know him and could work with him.
Here in his native country, as well as in his second homeland in the USA, Radoslav Sutnar leaves a distinct mark. He will be missed there and here.
Doc. Josef Mištera
Ladislav Sutnar Fakulty of Design and Arts
Foundation of Radoslav and Elaine Sutnar