Jiří Sozanský

Jiří Sozanský (born 27 June 1946) is a Czech sculptor, painter and graphic artist. He came from a poor background and worked in blue-collar jobs before being accepted as an exceptional talent to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He took manual jobs also as a student and graduate to keep his personal and creative freedom. He is an amateur boxer, founder of the Boxart group.

His life was brutally affected by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and he was deeply touched by the sacrifice of Jan Palach. Sozanský was active organizer of various unofficial meetings and artistic activities at the Terezín Memorial or Old Most, demolished for coal mining, throughout the normalization until the fall of the communist regime. Then in the communist prison in Valdice and communist concentration camps at uranium mines in the Příbram District, or in besieged Sarajevo. In his work he consistently commemorates political prisoners and victims of the communist regime (Milada Horáková, Jan Zahradníček, Ivan Martin Jirous, Václav Havel, and others) and refers to literature sources, such as Samuel Beckett's ''Stories and Texts for Nothing'', Orwell's novel ''1984'', and Václav Havel, Primo Levi's and Rudolf Höss's writings. He is a recipient of the award ''Knight of Czech Culture'', the certificate ''Participant of the Resistance and Opposition to Communism'' and was awarded ''For his extraordinary contribution to the reflection of modern history'' by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. He is the author of the triptych ''Jan Palach - Ascension'' at Karolinum and ''Memorial to the Victims of the August 1968 Invasion and the Victims of the 1969 Protests'' for Wenceslas Square. Provided by Wikipedia