Blažej Baláž
Laureate of the 2024 edition
A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, he currently works as a university professor at the Faculty of Education of Trnava University in Trnava. For the past thirty years he has devoted himself to political, environmental, activist, participatory and neo-conceptual art. His media range includes painting, actions, performances, events, drawings, objects and printmaking.
Laureate profile
A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, he currently works as a university professor at the Faculty of Education of Trnava University in Trnava. For the past thirty years he has devoted himself to political, environmental, activist, participatory and neo-conceptual art. His media range includes painting, actions, performances, events, drawings, objects and printmaking.
His work has received international recognition. Abroad, he has exhibited, for example, at the 18th International Print Biennale in Ljubljana in 1989; at the Drawing exhibition in Provo, United States, in 1990; at the International Print Triennale in Kraków in 1991; at the 5th International Drawing Triennale in Wrocław in 1992; at the 12th International Biennale of Small Sculpture in Murska Sobota, Slovenia, in 1995; at Objekt/objekt. Metamorfózy v čase (Object/Object. Metamorphoses in Time) in Prague in 2001; at Formate der Transformation 89–09 in Vienna in 2010; and at SIGNAL – The Story of (Post-)conceptual Art in Slovakia at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest in 2019.
In Slovakia, his work could be seen at: Výmena pozícií (Exchange of Positions) at the House of Art (Dom umenia) in 1995; Umenie akcie 1989 – 2000 (Action Art 1989 – 2000) at the Nitra Gallery and the Tatra Gallery in 2001; Slovenská grafika 20. storočia (20th-Century Slovak Printmaking) at the Bratislava City Gallery and the Central Slovak Gallery in Banská Bystrica in 2007; and Krv (Blood) at the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava in 2012.
He has held many solo exhibitions: at the Central Slovak Gallery in 1992, 2015 and 2018, the Bratislava City Gallery in 1993, the House of Art in Bratislava in 2009 and the East Slovak Gallery in 2007. Abroad, he has exhibited solo at the Dům umění in České Budějovice in 2002, Galerie Kabinet in Brno in 2006, the Slowakisches Institut Wien in 2009 and the Slowakisches Institut Berlin in 2011. His work has been included in the publications Intaglio (Thames & Hudson, United Kingdom, 2007) and Prōtocollum 2016/2017. Global Perspectives on Visual Vocabulary (Berlin: Dickersbach Kunstverlag, Germany, 2016).
He has received a number of domestic and international awards, including the Award of the Union of Visual Artists of the Czech Republic at the 9th International Drawing Biennale, Plzeň, Czech Republic, 2014, and the Special Award by the Jury at the Osten Biennial of Drawing, Skopje, Macedonia, 2016.
Two monographs have been devoted to the artist and his work: Blažej Baláž 1975 – 2003 (Jiří Valoch, Anna Vartecká), 2003; and Blažej Baláž: Moja cesta [My Journey] (Mária Orišková, Roman Gajdoš), 2016.