The ranks of honorary citizens of Plzeň have been expanded in memoriam by designer Sutnar

Pilsen - Renowned artist and designer Ladislav Sutnar has today become an honorary citizen of Pilsen posthumously. The city also unveiled a commemorative plaque on the building in Dominikánská Street in the city center. Sutnar, who passed away exactly 36 years ago in a month, is one of the most famous natives of Pilsen in the world. By awarding him honorary citizenship, Pilsen recognized his globally significant contributions to graphic design and visual communication, as well as his support for the Czechoslovak anti-Nazi and anti-communist resistance, said Mayor Martin Baxa (ODS) today.
    "The city of Pilsen does not have many truly globally significant natives, and perhaps the most significant among them is indeed Ladislav Sutnar," he said. He considers the awarding of honorary citizenship and the unveiling of the commemorative plaque to be the minimum the city can do to honor the esteemed native. Until recently, however, not many people in Pilsen or in the Czech Republic knew of Sutnar. The totalitarian regime practically erased him from Czech history due to his involvement in anti-communist activities.
    Designer, typographer, painter, and graphic artist Ladislav Sutnar was born on November 9, 1897, in Pilsen and died on November 18, 1976, in New York. He was one of the main representatives of Czech modernism. In the 1930s, for example, he designed service items made of boiling glass, one of the first industrially manufactured in Europe, as well as a porcelain set and steel cutlery. These items became the best-selling household goods for the middle class and received many international awards. In 1939, he emigrated to the USA and became a pioneer of information design. In exile, he also supported the Czechoslovak anti-Nazi and later anti-communist resistance.

Sutnar's villa in Baba - arch. Starý

    The city of Pilsen owns one of Sutnar's works. A year ago, his son donated one of the studies from the extensive Sutnar cycle Venus (Venuše) created in the 1960s and 1970s in the USA to the city.
    Since 1945, Pilsen has awarded honorary citizenship to several dozen personalities, half of whom received it after 1990. Conversely, after the regime change in 1989, the communist prime ministers Klement Gottwald and Antonín Zápotocký, as well as two Russian generals who participated in the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, lost their honorary citizenship. Sutnar is the third person to receive honorary citizenship posthumously, following American General George Patton and artist Jiří Trnka. The most recent honorary citizens of Pilsen were Karel Gott, a native of Pilsen, and the first bishop of Pilsen, František Radkovský, who became honorary citizens in 2009 on the occasion of Gott's seventieth birthday.