Vladimír Franz

Vladimír Franz was born on 25 May 1959 in Prague. He is a Czech composer, artist, university teacher and occasional writer, poet and playwright. He graduated from grammar school in Prague-Košíře and from the Faculty of Law of Charles University (1978–1982, JUDr.). Alongside his studies he studied painting privately with Karel Souček and Andrej Bělocvětov, composition with Miroslav Raichl and Vladimír Sommer, art history with Jaromír Homolka and music history with Jaromír Kincl. From 1981 to 1984 he was a co-founder, stage and set designer and composer of the devised theatre Kytka. Since the early 1980s he has composed music for the stage — he is the author of music for more than 160 theatre productions, as well as of staged oratorios (Judith, Ruth, Heracles), radio plays, operas (Ludus Danielis, War with the Newts), symphonic works (First Symphony “Songs of Solitude”, the music for the ballet Goldilocks) and more than 150 songs.

As a visual artist he works chiefly in oil and watercolour; his work ranges from symbolically treated elementary motifs of nature and watercolour impressions to large-format expressive variations on musical themes and large altarpieces. From roughly 2004 he moved from lyrical-expressive pictures towards more engaged, socially critical works using collage, comics and kitsch elements. He has held over 75 solo exhibitions in the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and New Zealand. Since 1991 he has taught at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (chairing its academic senate from 1996 to 2000), and since 2016 also at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem; he holds a professorship. He is a six-time laureate of the Alfréd Radok Foundation Prize for best music (and has been nominated a further seven times). In 2013 he ran for President of the Czech Republic.