Jiří Sozanský

Life

Jiří Sozanský was born on 27 June 1946 in Prague. He was born to parents who met on the barricades during the Prague Uprising and married soon after. He never knew his biological father Ivan Sozansky, who came from Subcarpatian Ukraine. Ivan Sozansky was arrested in 1948 while trying to cross the state border, but managed to escape from prison. It has not been possible to trace whether he was forcibly deported to the Soviet Union after the war. In 1952 a court declared Ivan Sozanský missing.

Jiří grew up with his mother in very poor circumstances and learned early in his childhood that he had to fend for himself. His mother was a trained hairdresser and, thanks to her occupation, had a wealth of social contacts. Later she remarried and moved with Jiří to Pec pod Sněžkou for a time to meet a new partner. She separated from her partner when Jiří was 10 years old. At that time, he spent weekends and part of his holidays with his grandmother Veronika and aunt Milena, where he met a year older Josef Kapín, later boxing champion, with whom he met again as an adult during boxing training. Aunt Milena worked as a curator at the National Gallery, where Jiří sometimes came to see her with his mother and learned about Czech Baroque art. Around the age of 13, his mother arranged a visit of the sculptor Jan Kodet, who first bought his drawing and encouraged him to become an artist.

After graduating from primary school, he trained as a mason in the company Pozemní stavby (Ground Construction) in 1960–1963. Active sportsmen worked as teachers at the school and under the influence of Václav Pšenička Jiří Sozanský started to train weightlifting at the age of 15. The librarian of Pozemní stavby introduced Sozanský to the music theorist Jaromír Paclt, who lent him books by French existentialists and publications on modern world art. Thanks to Paclt, he also met Zbyněk Sekal. Artist of the enterprise Zdeněk Fultner founded an art club for him, provided him with painting materials and supported him in his preparation for studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. After graduating from the apprenticeship, he passed the entrance exams for evening studies at the Václav Hollar School of Graphic Arts, but was dissatisfied with the low standard of the local teachers and left the school.

Since 1963 he worked as a bricklayer, scaffolder, later as a digger and after undergoing rheumatic fever and long-term rehabilitation as a stoker. From 1965 he was employed by the Geological survey as a driver's mate and for another year as a stagehand at Vinohrady Theatre. In the mid-1960s, he visited the Bohdan Kopecký exhibition and his expressive records of the devastated landscape of the Most region influenced Sozanský so much that he later created some of his major works there.

Scholarships, awards, grants

1971 17 November (Day of Struggle for Freedom and Democracy and International Student Day) Prize, Academy of Fine Arts in Prague

1988 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, New York Scholarship

1995 Grant Open Society Fund Prague

1995 Honorable Mention International Peace Centre, Sarajevo

2007 Medal for long-term cooperation with Terezín Memorial

2016 Knight of Czech Culture, Award of the Minister of Culture

2019 Certificate of Participation in Resistance and Opposition to Communism

2022 Award for outstanding contribution to the reflection of modern history from the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes

2024 Medal of Merit 1st Grade in the arts

Work

Jiří Sozanský is one of those artists whose work immediately resonates with the pulse of the times in which they live. He entered the Czech art scene in the mid-1970s, at the height of normalisation and creative unfreedom. His entire artistic output was committed to opposing all forms of violence, despotism and ideological dictatorship that trampled on human rights and human dignity. He is known as a non-conformist artist and a man of distinct opinions and attitudes, expressing himself through large-scale multimedia projects tied to a specific place. His activities in unusual places and spaces revived the subdued art scene of the 1970s. His actions spoke to the conscience of a "normalising society", even at considerable personal risk. As an eternal theme, he is interested in man in extreme situations, his inner state of mind and external reactions towards the human community. His paintings, drawings, sculptures, objects, installations, environments and performances react to a specific environment and social situation as an urgent warning memento. Such were his events in Terezín, Most, Vysočany or Veletržní palác, which were logically followed by projects realized after 1990 in the Valdice Prison and in the former Jesuit Church in Litoměřice as well as a number of events reflecting the wartime suffering of the inhabitants of Sarajevo, presented in the Czech Republic and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is one of the artists who take a responsible role in the concept of art as a personal statement about the world around us. Sozanský repeatedly and urgently raises important and not very popular topic, which in his artistic reflection also mirrors the state and direction of our civilization." (abbreviated quote, see e.g. J. T. Kotalík: from the catalogue of the exhibition "Sutiny - sculptures prints paintings collage" Municipal House, Prague 2009, Amnézie, Municipal House Prague 2019) Sozansky's paintings advocating the victims of mass violence have predecessors in the Horrors of War series by Francisco Goya and Guernica by Pablo Picasso, his sculptures express a deep connection with the existentialism of Alberto Giacometti.

Sozansky's work is characterized by thematic cycles, coherence and continuity of topics, and a multimedia synthetic approach, combining artistic techniques with performance and live actors in a unique scenography. His distinctive artistic signature is charged with dynamic expression and bold color, creating the illusion of a thunderous struggle. The baroque principle of heightened plastic dynamism is generally encoded into his dramatic figure modelling. He compensates for this by the sometimes cold architectural setting of the action or the meditative position of the portraits, and by using fragments of texts that were the inspiration for a particular work.

Early work

During his training for the exams at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Jiří Sozanský was engaged in drawing and painting portraits, and while working for the Geological survey he painted landscapes. Already during his studies and then until 1979 he devoted himself to graphic art. In 1968–1973 he created a series of prints with biblical themes, drawings and paintings from the surrounding of the Kladno steelworks and the Most region. During his visits to the basement apartment of Mr. Švacha, who was a model in the sculpture studio of the Academy of Fine Arts, the series of graphic prints Job and Basement were created. Sozanský depicts socially compelling and relevant content, seen against the broader context of human existence. The human being is depicted naked, alone and without props, as close to pathos as to the misery of humanity. Sozansky's reflection on old age, suffering, loneliness and pain is a timely parallel to the story of the Old Testament Book of Job. In 1971, he won the 17 November Prize for his series of paintings From the Life of a Blind Man. His graduation work on the theme of human suffering was based on the diary of Albert Speer.

From 1970 he modelled sculptures in the studio of Olbram Zoubek. The model for the sculpture with a deeply humanistic message Silent Lament was Mr. Švacha. A series of frottage paintings were made from the sculpture, and the entire Basement series became the basis for scenographic models depicting a man in extreme situation. He concluded his travels to the Theresienstadt Ghetto, which he undertook from 1973, with his first solo exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculptures in 1976. From 1975 came the series of large-scale tempera drawings Prophets and ink drawings of the series Old Men. Sozansky's sculptures Memento and Silent Lament became part of the collection of the Terezín Memorial.

In 1977, he began working with space and created his first environments together with Ivan Bukovský in the courtyard of Small Fortress. For his artistic metaphors of human figures in extreme situations, he used a construction of wire mesh and plaster. In the series Basement (1979), the human figure gets lost in the maze of a house and recalls the trauma of the normalisation era, which Marie Langrová described as wandering from wall to wall. In 1979–1980, drawings of the series Organism of the City and in 2006–2010, reconstructed models of extreme situations were created, where small human figures serve as the scale of sculptural architectures (Models of Extreme Situations, 1979–2006, Skeletons, 1984–2009, Homage to Jan Palach, 2008, Mater Mortis, 2010)

1980–1985

Sozansky's activities in Small Fortress culminated in 1980 with a private symposium, which was attended by Zdeněk Beran, Ivan Bukovský, Oldřich Kulhánek, Lubomír Janečka, Petr Kovář and Ivan Dolejšek. The works created inside the Small Fortress were exhibited directly in the prison cells and in the corridor of the solitary confinement cells in the IV. yard. The cultural inspector of the town tried to prevent the exhibition by summoning police with dogs, by denouncing the exhibition to Ministry of Culture and to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and informing the StB, which began investigating the participants. The exhibition was banned shortly afterwards when officials realized that it was not just a commemoration of the Holocaust, but an obvious reminder of the fascist practices of the new totalitarianism. In 1979–1980, he created a series of drawings, Project IV. Yard, which confront the silhouettes of human figures with the cold geometry of space. A partial reinstallation of the sculptures, which had been left in a former potato warehouse during the normalization, took place in 1991. For the reconstruction, Sozanský invited young actors, who performed during the opening and later repeated staging completely naked just for photo documentation.

From 1980 onwards, his drawing series Days and Years of My Mother was created, where he set the portraits in an impersonal architecture suggested only by lines. The series was created continuously and ended with his mother's death in 1989. From 1981 he worked in Most on the series The Trial and Anatomy of an Industrial Landscape and in 1982 he created drawings and installations on the theme of Escape together with Jiří Novák. Architect Jiří Borl, who draw plans and perspectives, was a co-author of the resulting large-scale drawings. In the early 1980s, Sozanský participated in the exhibition Malostranské dvorky (Small Town yards) (1981) and took part in several generational exhibitions in regional or unofficial galleries (Karlovy Vary, Hodonín, Písek, Liberec), which broke the existing ideological monopoly of the official Union of Czechoslovak Visual Artists. At that time, he used photography, painting and metal cages, which delimited the space for the figure (Sculptures and Objects, 1980–1984, Family Portrait, 1982–1985). Sozansky's cages with figures, which are a combination of assemblage and plaster limbs, most of all resemble variants of the torture instrument from Kafka's short story In the Penal Colony.

At the turn of 1983–1984, reading a samizdat edition of Orwell´s novel 1984, inspired him to start a project in the setting of the interior of the burnt-out Trade Fair Palace. Thanks to arch. Miroslav Masák and the company SIAL, which reconstructed the building for the purposes of the National Gallery, he was able to realize his plans there for several months. The project included live performances, photographs, paintings, reinforcing iron cages and sculptural objects (the events Survive, There and Back, Massacre, Human Couple). Thanks to the collaboration of Evald Schorm, the cameraman Jaroslav Kučera and editor Jiří Brožek, as well as several Laterna magika actors participated in the film. Everything took place under conspirative conditions, and Sozanský eventually stopped the entire project so as not to endanger the others involved. The results of the art project were exhibited as late as 2014 under the title 1984 - The Year of Orwell at the Trade Fair Palace.

1988–1990

In the late 1980s, Sozanský returned to painting with the cycles Battlefield (1988–1989) and The Fall (1989–1991), in which he combined large-scale oil painting with assemblage. The Battlefield series follows House No. 50 and depicts naked human bodies that gradually disappear under broad strokes of black paint, evoking the merging of bodies with the earth. The Fall cycle has its antecedent in a sculpture that Sozanský placed in 1982 in the chancel of a church in Most that was slated for demolition. It does not refer to any specific event, but represents some inexplicable tragedy or fate. Sozanský uses both cycles to renew and evaluate his relationship to the Baroque.

In 1988, Sozanský exhibited his large-scale paintings of groups of naked human bodies in dramatic situations jointly with plaster objects by Hugo Demartini at the Lidový dům (People's House) in Vysočany. In the same year, he participated in the unofficial show of previously banned artists Forum 88 in the Prague Marketplace (environment Closed, Sozanský organized the event together with Theodor Pištěk). In 1988 he also exhibited in the National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and in 1989 at the Spring Salon in Paris at the Grand Palais.

1990s

In 1990, Sozanský together with the prisoners created a memorial to the victims of totalitarianism in Valdice prison, consisting of concrete torsos of human figures with partially exposed iron construction and reinforced concrete blocks. The prisoners engraved it with the names of their fellow prisoners who had been tortured by the guards. Photodocumentation of the work, together with prisoners' testimonies, was published in a book. The statues installed in the prison's walking yard interfered with normal functioning and in 2007 had to be removed and taken to the Vojna Memorial in the former communist concentration camp and uranium mines near Příbram. Sozanský created a new bronze Memorial to Political Prisoners in front of Valdice prison at the request of the Ministries of Culture and Justice, which was unveiled in 2009. In 1992, he created another monumental memorial to the victims called Memento mori for the Litoměřice Crematorium in the former Nazi concentration camp and Richard Underground Factory and Mines.

After returning from Sarajevo, he exhibited his photographic records, collages and drawings in New synagogue in Libeň, Prague. The exhibition City under Siege included a performance by the theatre group HAMADA. During his trips to Sarajevo, the burnt down University Library, designed by the Czech architect Vítek, became a focal point for Sozanský. He held an exhibition of his paintings on the theme The Struggle of Angels at this site. The total area of the Forum populi canvases, assembled into a single unit, was 12 x 7 metres. The statics of the library walls were disturbed and the whole installation collapsed in January 1996. In 1996, Sozanský participated in the Tribute to Sarajevo with his installation in Grbavica (Sarajevo), a performance by a theatre group (Attempted Resurrection, September 1996) and the launching of burning straw bales on the bridge over the Miljacka river to symbolise the expulsion of the evil spirit of war The final exhibition Art in Extreme Situation, which presented Sozansky's works on the Sarajevo mission, was held in 1977 at Le Clos des Arts in Brussels The city of Sarajevo itself, together with the testimony of refugees from the territories occupied by Serbian paramilitary forces, became the inspiration for a series of paintings on the theme of Apocalypse.

The previous paintings are loosely related to the graphic cycles Beasts (1999), Refugees (2000), Hunt (2000) and large-scale etchings of the series Stone and Bone (2001), inspired by the poetry of Jan Zahradníček. Sozansky's work with the performers was continuously documented with photographs, which served as the basis for repaints in many variations. In 1996, these works were adjusted into metal constructions and installed as Depository of Anxiety in cell No. 42 in Terezín Small Fortress.

2000–2010

Accidentally discovered samizdat edition of poem Znamení moci (Signs of Power) by Jan Zahradníček provided Sozanský with a new source of inspiration for works dealing with the spiritual legacy of prisoners of communist and Nazi concentration camps. Since 2000, he has used fragments of the texts as an equal part of his pictorial collages, drawings and paintings.

In 2003 Sozanský responded to the disastrous flood of Prague in 2002, which completely devastated part of the Karlín district, with an installation of large-scale paintings that combined Samuel Beckett texts (Stories and Texts for Nothing) with photographs, painting and assemblage, on and around the Negrelli Viaduct (the Exodus, Animation of Cruelty, Battlefield, Incident, Struggle of Angels, Apocalypse, Flood series). The project included performances by the ensembles Teatr Novogo Fronta, Boxart, Palaestra, etc., on Beckett's texts in the devastated interior of the Musical Theatre Karlín, scripted and set-designed by J. Sozansky.

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and the 10th anniversary of the end of ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Sozanský exhibited a series From Dust and Ashes (2005) in Old Town Hall, which loosely followed the previous Meeting with Beckett and Homage to Jan Zahradníček - Stone and Bone. The basis for the large-scale drawings, paintings and collages combined with texts were the records of prisoners from Auschwitz and Primo Levi and Viktor Frankl and part of the personal notes of the Nazi commander of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss published during the Nuremberg Trial. In 2007 he expanded this series to include works inspired by Willy Mahler's diary, which was used by Arnošt Goldflam in 1996 as the basis for the play Sweet Theresienstadt at the Archa Theatre.

In 2006, Sozanský presented the sculpture Apocalyptic Horseman as part of the Year with Jewish Culture at the Libeň New Synagogue, which was later transferred to the garden of Troja Palace.

From the memorial to the victims of totalitarianism, originally created in 1990 in the Valdice Prison, which was deinstalled and partially destroyed in 2007, the torsos of human figures were transported to the former communist concentration camp Vojna in the Příbram District. In 2009–2010, the sculptures were restored, supplemented with a ladder with a bronze statue and a concrete pedestal, and the Memorial to the Victims of Communism thus acquired a definitive form. Sozanský elaborated his personal life experience with the communist regime in 2009 in a sculpture entitled The Sixty-Ninth, where he incorporated a posthumous mask of Jan Palach. Together with the sculptures The Grand Inquisitor and The Allies, it is placed in the foyer of the High Court in Prague. In the conference room of the High court in Prague, a composed evening took place, which included a part of Aleš Březina's opera Tomorrow will be... with Soňa Červená.

2011–2024

In 2011 Sozanský exhibited his project Metropolis as a personal tribute to Prague. The series consisted of large-format oil paintings of Prague monuments, some early works and sculptures: the biblical sculpture Crucifixion and an original representation of St. Vitus Cathedral. The 2012 Olympic year was commemorated by a group of sporting artists around Jiří Sozanský with a joint exhibition Ekecheiria - a tribute to the Olympic tradition at the City of Prague Museum. Sozanský exhibited large-scale drawings celebrating the beauty of the body, paintings and sculptural studies of wrestlers. In collaboration with Meda Mládková and architect David Vávra, thematic exhibitions Skeletons (2010), The Zone (2013), Homage to Jan Palach (2014) were organized at Museum Kampa.

In 2014, Sozanský presented his project 1984 – The Year of Orwell for the first time in public at Trade Fair Palace. The entire project was created 30 years earlier in 1984 in a situation when the communist regime drove independent culture underground and artists lived with the feeling of permanent threat from the authorities and a network of confidents they did not know at the time. The architecture of the burnt-out building expressed well the dehumanizing conditions of the normalization regime ("execution ground of conscience") and, as a monumental cage, it suited well the intention to create a film documentary describing various existential situations there. From the basic script from 1983 to 1984, sketches and photo documentation of the actions (Survive, Escapes, The Hunt, Mechanisms of Power, There and Back, Massacre, The Human Couple) have survived. To these, Sozanský added works from the series Fragments of Memory and paintings and sculptures inspired by the architecture of the building (Skeleton, Ashes), photo collages against the background of the burnt-out interior of the building (Mater mortis, The Hunt, The Incident), paintings combining architecture with the figure (Hangmen, Torso, Execution, The Grand Inquisitor, The Big Bitch, Pillories).

In 2014–2015, he returned to the theme of Auschwitz once more and, based on photographic documentation, large-scale paintings of prison brick barracks and their interiors were created. The scheme of the extermination process, which is represented by a plaster model in the Auschwitz museum, was reflected by Sozanský in a series of drawings of naked bodies in the backdrop of the Auschwitz camp and bronze sculptures, where small figures give scale to the monstrous architecture (exhibited in Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region in 2015 under the title Extreme Situations).

Work by technique

Graphic cycles': Basement, Job, Pilgrim, Wrestling, From Dust and Ashes

Cycles of drawings, paintings and collages: The Organism of the city, Days and Years of My Mother, Anatomy of an Industrial Landscape, The Body, On the Edge of the city, Skin, Incident, Escapes, Battlefield, The Fall, Metropolis, Hanged Men, Apocalypse, Kafileria, Scavengers, Rubble, Ghetto

Video Projects': Escape ("Most 82"), Survive, There and Back, Massacre, Human Couple, House No.50 - Man JOB, Attempted Resurrection, Flood

Thematic environmental projects, installations, art projects': The Process, Evacuation (Most 1981/1982), Panic, House No. 50 ( Individual Eating, Family Psychotherapy, Convalescents, Bedroom, Attributes of Love, Mirror of Solitude, Visitors, Incident, Big Laundry), Fortress (Terezín), Containers, Closed, Report from 3. Ward, Homage to Jan Zahradníček, Karlín Zone A, From Dust and Ashes, Confined in the Body, The Twenty-Seventh Day, Skeletons, 1984 - The Year of Orwell, Extreme Situations, The Zone, Homage to Jan Palach, Amnesia

Collections

National Gallery Prague

Moravian Gallery in Brno

Terezín Memorial

Museum Kampa

Centre Georges Pompidou Paris

Musée d'art et d'histoire de Saint-Denis, Paris

Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris

Helsinki City Museum

National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo

Aleš South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou

Regional Gallery Liberec

Gallery of Central Bohemian Region in Kutná Hora (formerly Czech Museum of Fine Arts in Prague)

Regional Gallery of the Highlands in Jihlava

Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové

Museum of Art Olomouc

Benedikt Rejt Gallery Louny

North Bohemian Art Gallery in Litoměřice

Gallery of Modern Art in Roudnice nad Labem

Art Gallery Karlovy Vary

Gallery Klatovy / Klenová

private collections at home and abroad

Exhibitions (selection)

1976 Jiří Sozanský, Terezín Memorial

1985 Jiří Sozanský: Drawings, Regional Gallery Liberec

1986/1987 Jiří Sozanský, Opatov Gallery, Prague, Na perch Gallery, Brno, Small Scene, České Budějovice

1987 Jiří Sozanský: House No. 50, Gallery 55, Kladno

1988 Jiří Sozanský: Graphic Cycles, Microbiological Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Prague

1989 Jiří Sozanský: 1970-1989, People's House in Vysočany, Prague

1990 Jiří Sozanský: Report from Ward 3, Valdice Prison

1991 Jiří Sozanský: Paintings, Nová síň Gallery, Prague

1991 Jiří Sozanský: Drawings, Litera Gallery, Prague

1993 Jiří Sozanský: The Theme of the Bible (1st exhibition of the series The Big Theme), Galerie Litera, Prague

1994 Jiří Sozanský: From Dust and Ashes, Military History Museum, Prague

1994 Jiří Sozanský: Graphics, University Gallery, Plzeň

1995 Jiří Sozanský: Forum Populi, Vyšehrad, Gorlice, Prague

1996 Jiří Sozanský: Sarajevo, Litera Gallery, Prague

1996 Jiří Sozanský: Exodus, Vyšehrad, Gorlice, Prague

1996 Jiří Sozanský: Homage to Sarajevo, Part I, Gallery of Czech Culture, Český Krumlov

Decorations

Awarded by Czech Republic

Medal of Merit (2024)