From Czechoslovakia to MoMA: How Sculptor Alex Kveton Built a Real Art Business

Art is the last thing people need, and art is the first thing people stop buying if economically there is uh some issues.
If you are in it for long term, it's like with the stock market, one year can be great, another a little bad, but next year is better.
Hi, welcome back to How Much Can I Make, the podcast about jobs and careers.
I'm your host Miravozeri.
Before we start today's show, I want to tell you that next week's episode is with a death investigator.
And trust me, you do not want to miss this one.
Today I chat with sculptor Alex Kventon and his wife Barbara about turning creativity into a real business and running it as a team.
Alex works with metal, and his sculptures can be found at the MoMA, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, and museums and galleries around the country.
We talk about the business of art, escaping communist Czechoslovakia, gallery commissions, and what it really takes to make it as a working artist in America.
So let's hear it from them.
Barbara and Alex, thank you so much for doing it for one thing.
I really appreciate it.
Hi Miron.
Hi.
Nice to have you here.
Thank you.
So you deal with the marketing and you help Alex in the design.
Yes, Alex has an all-art career before we met.
But once we met, I already had uh several years' experience of working as an entrepreneur.
So we talked and decided that it would be interesting to enter art business together.
I, of course, pursue more education, which was required to do art business.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay, Alex.
So you the artist.
Yeah, I am the artist, and first of all, I would like to thank you to make the interview and somehow to get closer to the life of artists who came from far away and tried to make his American dream.
Okay, this is what I want to hear about.
You actually started, you were born and raised in Czechoslovakia.
Both of you, correct?
Both of us, yes.
Yes.
So were you an artist in Czechoslovakia?
Absolutely, yes.
But what was your trajectory like?
Where did you start?
I always want to be an artist.
But my father, he was in a construction business engineer doing that real work.
And he said, no, you don't want to go to the art school right away, you're gonna go to technical school.
You're gonna learn craft, you're gonna learn how to work ethics and everything.
After the school, you become like a foreman in a shop.
But what did you study in the technical school?
That was engineering.
Engineering.
Engineering construction and engineering and working with the metal.
That's why later everything started evolving from the previous education, which was thanks to my father, he pushed me to do the technical school.
After that, I was lucky and I was admitted to art academy in Prague, where I studied for six years sculpture and industrial design.
And after that, you were an artist in Czechoslovakia.
I graduated from the art academy and became master of fine art.
I was allowed to work as a freelance artist and have a government commission.
Then Czechoslovakia was a communist country and the government owned everything.
This means only people from the highest education, from the art academies, which was actually three art academies in Czechoslovakia for 15 million people, only three art academies.
And because the education in that time was for free, this means after I graduated the school, all the artists which they finished, the art academy in Czechoslovakia, they have guaranteed work because the government pays for their education.
This means you have to work back for the government.
But you get paid for it.
I was paid very well.
Because the communist was system, everybody knows that time I'm talking about 70s or 60s, 70s this time.
East European, East Germans, Soviets, they were the greatest athletes, they were the scientists, they were artists, because was some kind of propaganda and the government supported people.
So what made you come to America?
What made me because I realize I make the money, but I don't have a freedom.
What do you mean you had to do pieces that they told you what to do?
Absolutely.
If you have a government commission, you have a Communist Party member who oversee and be sure it's not against their ideology.
You cannot do whatever stuff you want.
So, what dream did you have?
What kind of pieces you wanted to do that you couldn't do there?
First of all, when you are young, you wanna travel.
No traveling.
They don't let the people travel.
Right.
Was maybe to the other socialist communist country in Europe, but that's it.
Well, I wanna travel.
What made you decide and how did you do it to move from Czechoslovakia to America?
Okay, I am a big time skier and I was lucky to get the bus the first time.
I go there, I return back.
Okay, next year was not even next year, that was basically the same year because we were skiing in February, March, and in summer I have another opportunity to go to Mallorca, Spain.
To do what?
Just for vacation.
Then I go for the permission, and it was like a police department, some kind of.
He said, No, you cannot go twice a year out of the country.
And they say no.
Okay, next year, again with the same group of skiers, I go to Austria and not come back.
I said, That's it.
So from Austria you went to where?
That time that was with my first wife.
We went to Austria, to American Embassy, and we said, We are refugees, we don't want to come back.
We would like to go to the United States.
And they say, okay.
11 months we were there in Austria waiting for that vetting process to be complete, and we came here as illegal immigrants, and basically we have a green card, and after five years, I become an American citizen.
So you came to America, you are not known here, you were known in Czechoslovakia as an artist.
How do you start working as an artist here?
I don't start working as an artist for myself, I start working as a fabricator for other sculptors.
Okay.
I start working in the metal, steel, bronze, copper, whatever.
Okay.
The previous education in the middle school when I had to weld, how to blacksmithing, calculation of the strengths for the material.
That helped me when I came over here and I find a job in that company in a Brooklyn.
The company which he mentioned, I think the grandfather studied that company, and then the son took it over.
It was a metal fabricating company, and he wanted to expand into the finer fabrication.
So he opened an art fabrication department, meaning fabricating sculptures for other artists.
Did my department grow and we start working with very famous people, Robert Dindiana, Jeff Koons, and Larry Bell and others.
This means they came with some kind of sketches idea, and somebody has to make 10, 20, 30 feet sculptures from it.
This means it's you cannot just enlarge it.
You have to calculate a lot of things in.
I know that.
Yeah, you went to technical school.
Exactly, and I am able to provide that for the company and for the artist.
And we have a very interesting client at the time in a company.
Her name was Edwina Sands, and he was the granddaughter of Winston Churchill.
With a lot of talents but a lot of connection, very nicely.
We could become the dear friends.
One day she said, Look, she looks at the sculpture and says, Huh, I don't know, is it my sculpture only Miss Alex's sculpture?
So when did you go independent?
Now I still work for the company.
I don't speak any English that time.
I try to go in from the gallery to gallery showing the pictures.
I make little small statues, you saw them up there.
Nobody was interested in it.
Because all of a sudden now you're competing with a hundred thousand artists in Czechoslovakia, you had 150.
Exactly.
I met the Kunst Historic and she told me, Alex, listen, in New York City is maybe 100,000 artists.
From those hundred thousand artists, maybe 20% have a chance to show in the gallery.
And from those 20%, maybe 5% actually sell.
Right.
And that was something for me to say, well, not what I want to do now.
I guess not just that, but America, Alex came to the United States in 1983.
When did you come to America?
I came in 94.
Okay.
After the world revolution.
America was a big dream.
America, and I hope it still is, was a country of impossible opportunities.
And he didn't mention that when he was in Austria for 11 months, waiting for his legal papers to come to the United States, he was working as an artist and he completed several commissions.
And for him it was encouraging, like, oh my god, once I get to the United States, I'm going to be busy, crazy.
Because he's talented and he has that education.
But unfortunately, the competition here is completely different because it's not based on education, it's based on oh, I decide to be an artist today.
So the competition is huge and it's not categorized.
Oh, this is a master of fine art.
That competition, I guess he was not expecting that.
Everybody here is an artist.
But when did you go on your own idea?
That time we are talking like in 1990 or something.
I live my American dream.
I have a beautiful house with big inground swimming pool, driving 12-cylinder jaguar.
That was something for the boy from the communist country.
That was the dream I traveled.
And I was there for 20 years.
Wow.
Wow, exactly.
Wow.
And some of those sculptors which I make their work, they said, Alex, what the hell are you doing over here?
You are sculptor in your own rights.
After 20 years, finally I say, okay, that's it.
I'm gonna go on my own.
So what did you do?
You started to do work in your home?
Yes, I have an already small studio in my home, building machine and stuff like that.
And then I met the Barbara.
When we met, I said, Oh my god, you're so fabulous.
Why don't you do more?
And he had some small show in New Jersey gallery and here or there, and I said, I'll support you.
Let's try.
So we started.
What was the first piece you sold?
Oh gosh, I don't remember because you need to first create really big inventory.
And how long did that take?
He really started working hard.
He was working weekends, long times.
Once you have five, six pieces in sculptures, so we already got some contacts with some galleries, with some showrooms.
He started to do his stainless steel sculptures, which got very popular.
What's your favorite metal to work?
Stainless steel also.
Yeah, stainless steel.
Why?
Because it doesn't rust and it lasts for not just because they rust, because the product is very fine.
See a lot of sculptures from the stainless steel, they have the rough kind of grind marks.
They look like a satin kind of grind marks.
With this kind of finish, you could hide a lot of imperfection.
Right, of course.
Now, if you have a mirror finish, every slight imperfection shows around it.
Screams out, absolutely.
And I'm doing that in mirror finish because not so many artists could do that.
Okay, got you.
So let's back up for a second.
What is your process?
You have an idea, you sketch on paper, then Barbara comes into the picture.
For now, as right now, I think we really work closely, collaborate almost on every piece.
Meaning I'm his very first critic and everything.
We got to the point of our business, and he's not 28 anymore, that whatever comes out of his studio, I want to have be a wow piece.
Because I know if I bring that wow piece to the gallery, somebody will go wow and buy it.
I don't need him to make pieces for inventory.
Do you have to go to the galleries yourself or do you have somebody representative that goes?
No, we do directly.
You do directly.
Years ago when we studied that, it was really long research.
Like we would go through all of art magazines, online websites, we would pick up some city and we would go and walk through the galleries because you need to make a research if the gallery is suitable for his style of artwork.
Remember the first gallery that showed you?
I guess Florida.
No, first gallery was in Jersey.
At that time, we were also going a lot of those art fairs.
We're talking about like early 2000s.
We were in Javid Center and the Trowbridge Gallery from like Suburb of Washington, they bought the whole collection, I think was like six sculptures.
Wow.
They were starting new galleries.
Probably celebrating.
We said, oh my god, that was something that was this don't happen so often, but they won a new work.
We were very happy that time.
We were working with them for several years, and slowly the galleries, some galleries approach us because they saw the work somewhere, you know, and that uh done the business grow up.
Alright, tell me about the process.
You come up with an idea, and then what?
I make first the drawing, and then uh because the sculptures are three-dimensional objects, I make a three-dimensional study from the cardboard paper.
Because the cardboard paper behaved like a sheet of metal.
You could cut it, you could bend it, you could twist it.
So then what?
You put it together as a three-dimensional part.
I will usually when I make the sculpture in a cardboard and the first idea, I make like in a double.
One part I glue together an identical part I am leaving as a template.
Oh! If the sculpture comes out nice, is appealing and have a chance to be made, then from the templates Barbara makes autocut drawings.
We send it to the laser company, they cut it the material, I pick it up, and I have a now material cut and I have a cardboard model.
In the real size and real sculpture, I go for the fine details which are not in a cardboard model.
It's not like somebody is paid you in advance to do that, right?
No!
So what is the we do, of course, custom commissions, and those are very welcome because, first of all, like you said, you get paid in front, and it's really nice, challenging.
It's something different, very refreshing.
Usually people come to you with a sketch and they say, We know.
No, no, I will have a gallery rep, or we created over the years a really nice network of designers and architects, and they will say, Hey, I have I'm doing this client's house.
Can I send you a picture of the living room?
I envision something there.
So I always require picture couple of pictures from different angles, show me what's around, what colors they use, what patterns they use, and then one computer I just do renderings, a couple of different proposals.
It can be maybe a sculpture which was already done, but I just scale it properly.
Maybe just a sketch which he did.
When I make it on a computer look like it's already sculpture, I may do two, three proposals, just maybe different colors, different shapes, and they pick up.
How do you price your tell the clients what it will cost them?
You don't know how long it will take to design.
We do, we do.
Just me and Alex, we've been doing this for 25 years.
So you more or less know the price of the metal.
He knows like how much welding is involved, so he can calculate how long it's going to take him.
And then, of course, over the years, we build up certain price range.
Like on the beginning, when you start, what they say that when artists ask how much I'm supposed to charge for a painting, they say you should charge per hour how you value your work.
So you may start at$50 an hour,$100 an hour.
But now Alex is worth a lot more an hour.
Exactly, exactly.
But our prices are stable.
That means like when you have a one sculpture eight foot and it's$40,000,$50,000, it's very rarely that there will be another eight-footer which will be$150.
You know what I mean?
We already have prices which are stable.
Right now we are represented seven, nine galleries.
All prices everywhere are the same.
Okay.
When it's like almost now, I would say by size.
But you love to work with stainless steel, I assume that's expensive, right?
So the prices are, of course, different.
Aluminum maybe cheaper, stainless steel more expensive, bronze even more expensive, there are even different alloys of bronze.
But the point is that in the last couple of years, especially now with all the tariffs, the prices of metal tripled.
But because we've been in this business for so long and our prices got to the certain level, the prices of material are not as significant.
Because we are self-sufficient, which is very important.
What do you mean by that?
That we do everything on our own.
If you need a guy who is going to weld it, if you need a guy who is going to bend it, suddenly you are paying other vendors, other people, and the cost out of your pocket goes out.
What is the biggest expense that you have that people don't know about and don't think about?
Biggest expense.
Commission, gallery commission.
What do they take?
50%.
50 5-0?
5-0, yes.
You see our expression.
Wow, 5-0, 50%.
It's a lot.
But good gallery for the artist could do more than the artist could do for himself.
Yes, of course.
It's a good gallery, I said always deserve it.
Because they make a home show, they make a they make all kinds of advertising.
They are outside, they work with designers.
And if me or Barbara would do this kind of work, what they are doing, then it's not possible.
So let me ask you something.
The gallery has 10 of your pieces, and they see the two are selling really well.
Do they come to you and say, make more like absolutely and you do?
So, what I want to know at what point your art changed from if it did changed from passion to business.
It did not.
It did not, and I'll tell you for myself.
It's because he's an artist, he works creatively, and he's not bothered by the business part at all.
Okay.
Are you the one that is the I'm the one?
So I navigate him.
Like we were talking about.
Okay, so he designs the piece, he makes the carbour model, and now we're going to decide what size we're going to do.
I know what size we're going to do because I know what gallery is requesting, what sold, what we need to replace, what sizes we need to replace.
You can be in many levels of art business.
You can be in different fancy galleries having monthly shows, it's beautiful, but you may sell or not, and then on the end of the month you have to pack your pieces and take it back home.
We have a mostly, I call it, I'm not even sure if it's a proper, but I call it commercial galleries.
That means we are on a permanent exhibition.
Okay, okay.
And you said that people come for custom work, and then you still have to pay 50% of the I would never if somebody approaches me and says, Oh, I saw your work, I would I'm looking for some piece.
Where did you see our work?
Oh, I saw it in Palm Beach in a gallery.
I'm sorry.
They are doing a good job that you saw it there, so you have to go through there.
Oh wow because you don't want to ruin it for now.
What am I risking?
It's not worth it to go beyond the gallery.
We have a gallery representations for 25 years.
We are with another gallery for 15 years.
You don't wanna ruin your long-term relationship and maybe potential great business for another decade just because going behind the back and selling one piece.
If somebody saw some publication or video and they saw Alex work and they come to you and say, Could you do something like this for me?
Would you still have to pay them?
Sculpture is three-dimensional, so usually people like to see it.
Like we rarely sell online.
Maybe our galleries do, but we rarely say online because you know the piece needs to be seen.
You mentioned before that you have something in the MOMA, you have major collectors, you have lots of galleries.
What was the first big break that you got?
There is never a break.
No, I think that was just there is never a break.
Art is the last thing people need.
And art is the first thing people stop buying if economically there is uh some issues.
Our business is like a stock market.
This is the podcast for people, how much you can make.
So I'm not going to say which is nothing that is not going to be true.
If you are in it for long term, it's like with the stock market.
One year can be great, another a little bad, but next year is better.
And we've created really nice network galleries, architects, designers.
So if you spread your eggs between many baskets, there is a big chance you will make a profitable year because it comes from so many places.
You showed and you sold art in Europe and in America.
What is the difference between the clients in Europe and America?
Do they look for different things?
Do they pay less?
The market is completely different.
For some reason, America, I don't know how it was before, just in those three decades I've been here.
Americans always are buying art.
In Europe, it's maybe the top one person or not even.
It's maybe you buy a small painting about the couch to the living room.
Here, people wanna be surrounded by beautiful pieces and not just the home goods, but quality, high art.
And we know some European artists, you would never make such a good business, art business in Europe.
I know you have some public art in some places.
What's the process of getting a project like this together?
Alex did a couple commissions, Jimmy Carter, Presidential Library and the Terry Town Headless Horseman User.
When I stepped in and I did a research, what it takes, it's a very extensive process.
Oh.
It's a completely different level of business.
Most of the time, you even have to hire professional proposal writer because the criteria, how it's supposed to be written, it's very strict.
You need to detail the cost, how much is material, how much is the labor, how much is packing, shipping, installation usually involves the union workers.
It's so complicated.
It was so complicated.
But it's still worth having, right?
It is.
Yeah.
What would you say is the biggest challenge about being a sculptor in America?
Sell your work.
Sell the work is the biggest challenge.
Because otherwise everything is here.
Material, no problem.
You could have a space, you could have everything, but you have to support that financially.
What's the biggest reward?
In a public place or in a mama or the carter house, like it's a returning client.
It's like when you meet a client, collector, and you learn they have a five, six, seven pieces of yours.
Alex's portfolio has so many varieties, styles, and sizes.
So clients come back because they can have a piece which is a tabletop piece, or they have a niche, or they have a shell, they have an empty corner.
Outdoor, you do a lot of outdoor.
So I guess the best reward is like when somebody comes and says, Oh my god, like we have five, six of your pieces and we love this.
If you see the people are buying, not because it's a huge name, but because it's a nice work and they love it.
That's very important.
And in a custom work, the reward is because, like I said, if I make a proposal on a computer and then we deliver the final product and they go, Wow, it's a hundred times better.
We don't expect it that and it's multiple layers and the colors are so completely different.
So, yeah, the vow effect, of course.
That's fantastic.
What is a dream project that you would like to do?
What that you didn't get a chance to do yet?
Okay, if somebody wanna build a new statue of liberty and I have a whole thousand people working on it, that would be probably the dream sculpture.
What would you like to see him do?
Maybe really one time some commission for really big sculpture.
We do have the sleepy hollow, which is 15, 25 feet.
Wow, whatever, it's around 20 feet, but something really big when you drive on a highway and you see it from afar.
Right.
Alright, hopefully we'll drive one day on the highway.
But for now, I'll just snag on the wood and continue what we've been doing for 25 years together.
I think it's it has been a good life and good business.
Your work as a team.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I I from drawings, you know, from designs, I do website design, all the social media, you know, all the photography, all the publishing, all the bookkeeping, you know, all the proposals.
I don't know how artists can go to the studio and create and on our side answer emails, requests, buy stuff.
It's really two two-person job.
I do admire every artist who is capable of doing as a one person what we do together.
All right, thank you so much, and I wish you lots of luck.
It you did a huge journey from communist Czechoslovakia to being very successful in America, in New York.
American Dream.
Kudos to you! Yes, thank you.
We are very happy to live in this country.
Of course, I'm sure.
That's it for today.
And if this made you curious about creative careers, head to how much can I make that info and check out the creative career category.
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So go to how much can I make that info.
And until then, I'll see you next week.