Plzeň is awarding culture prizes for the second time this year, and they will be received by three men

Ing. arch. Jan Soukup (*1946)

Plzeň - Filmmaker Bohdan Bláhovec, musician Jan Sedláček, and architect Jan Soukup will receive artistic awards in Plzeň this year. They were selected by a professional jury from the submitted proposals. This year, the artistic award is being presented for the second time; the city will hand over the awards at a ceremonial event in September, said CTK chief mayor's deputy for culture Eva Herinková (ČSSD).
    This year, the city will induct eighty-seven-year-old Jan Sedláček into the artistic hall of fame as a figure who has significantly impacted Plzeň's cultural life. Since 1946, he has served as a violinist in the Plzeň Radio Orchestra, and in 1961 he became the concertmaster. In the early sixties, he prompted the establishment of a chamber orchestra made up of the radio orchestra's players. In 1961, he founded the Plzeň Radio Quartet, and after a one-year engagement in Japan in 1973, he formed Sedláček's Quartet.
    As a patron of the arts, the city will honor sixty-seven-year-old architect Jan Soukup for his many years of consistent work and activity in the revitalization and restoration of cultural monuments in Plzeň and the Plzeň region. Bohdan Bláhovec will receive an award for an extraordinary artistic achievement by an artist under 30 for a documentary film about the teenage band 5Angels, for which he received an award at the festival in Jihlava. The city will recognize the Klausurní performance by the students of the Circus School Flic from Turin, in collaboration with students from the Faculty of Design and Art Ladislav Sutnar at the University of West Bohemia, directed by Petr Forman from the Plzeň 2015 company, as the cultural event of the year, which took place last May.
    The city of Plzeň presented its annual artistic awards for the first time last year. It aims to highlight significant artistic activities, works, or achievements that enrich the cultural events and development of the city and enhance its reputation. The first laureates were young visual artist Marie Kohoutová, academic painter Jiří Beránek, and poet Josef Hrubý. The cultural event of the year 2012 was the exhibition of the West Bohemian Gallery titled The Beginning of the Century.