Dec 03 | '12 | Jindřich Chalupecký Award 2012
Winner of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award
The winner of the prestigious Jindřich Chalupecký Award is Vladimír Houdek, the only painter among finalists.
In the final exhibition Houdek was represented with a series of twenty paintings in the typical palette of dark colors. “Houdek belongs to the generation of artists who continue in exploring the ambiguous and often problematic heritage of modernism. We realize the possible equivocality of this position, however, we consider it essential that he continues to help the creation of new formal solutions,“ said the jury chairman Christian Rattemeyer. The 28-year-old Houdek comes from Nové Město na Moravě. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in Vladimír Skrepl's studio. In 2010 Houdek was awarded the Young Painting Critics' Award. At the beginning of his career Houdek focused according to critics on expressive narrative paintings, but gradually bigger and bigger monochromatic surfaces started to dominate his work; he switched to pure abstractions that keep the original expression.