[11] The librarian of Pozemní stavby introduced Sozanský to the music theorist Jaromír Paclt,[12] who lent him books by French existentialists and publications on modern world art.

[28] Sozanský finished studies at the Academy with honours in 1973, defending his diploma thesis on the subject of human suffering, where, in addition to paintings and drawings, he also presented his sculptural works.

Sozanský attempted to depict this topic artistically only after the death of Ota Kraus at the beginning of the new millennium, under the influence of Primo Levi's texts and the writings of Rudolf Höss.

[36] The exhibition was a direct reaction to the impotent work of young authors who met the criteria of the selection committee of the normalized official Union of Czechoslovak Visual Artists.

In 1985, Artcentrum again refused to allow the sale of Sozansky's sculptures[43] and to export them for the group exhibition of Czech artists, Anxiety, which Meda Mládková prepared in United States.

The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and the subsequent normalization deprived his generation of the chance to exist in a natural cultural climate that would not be distorted by ideological manipulations.

(abbreviated quote, see e.g. J. T. Kotalík: from the catalogue of the exhibition "Sutiny - sculptures prints paintings collage" Municipal House, Prague 2009, Amnézie, Municipal House Prague 2019)[61][62] Sozansky's paintings advocating the victims of mass violence have predecessors in the Horrors of War series by Francisco Goya and Guernica by Pablo Picasso, his sculptures express a deep connection with the existentialism of Alberto Giacometti.

[53] Sozansky's work is characterized by thematic cycles, coherence and continuity of topics, and a multimedia synthetic approach, combining artistic techniques with performance and live actors in a unique scenography.

[67] In 1979–1980, drawings of the series Organism of the City and in 2006–2010, reconstructed models of extreme situations were created, where small human figures serve as the scale of sculptural architectures (Models of Extreme Situations, 1979–2006, Skeletons, 1984–2009, Homage to Jan Palach, 2008, Mater Mortis, 2010)[68] Sozansky's activities in Small Fortress culminated in 1980 with a private symposium, which was attended by Zdeněk Beran, Ivan Bukovský, Oldřich Kulhánek, Lubomír Janečka, Petr Kovář and Ivan Dolejšek.

Sozansky's cages with figures, which are a combination of assemblage and plaster limbs,[73] most of all resemble variants of the torture instrument from Kafka's short story In the Penal Colony.

The project included live performances, photographs, paintings, reinforcing iron cages and sculptural objects (the events Survive, There and Back, Massacre, Human Couple).

In an abandoned Vysočany house slated for demolition, Sozanský created a large-scale environment with life-size photographs and paintings of human nudes in dramatic situations and embedded metal and wooden structures.

In collaboration with J. Borl, he created spatial installations: Individual Catering, Family Psychotherapy, Convalescents, Bedroom, Attributes of Love, Mirror of Solitude, Visitors, Incident, Big Laundry.

[76] The distinctive pathos and expressive, almost baroque overflow created a suitable setting for the subsequent performance by the French actor Dominique Collignon-Maurin on the theme Man Job, which is captured on video.

[77] In 1988, Sozanský exhibited his large-scale paintings of groups of naked human bodies in dramatic situations jointly with plaster objects by Hugo Demartini at the Lidový dům (People's House) in Vysočany.

In the same year, he participated in the unofficial show of previously banned artists Forum 88 in the Prague Marketplace (environment Closed, Sozanský organized the event together with Theodor Pištěk).

[78] The statues installed in the prison's walking yard interfered with normal functioning and in 2007 had to be removed and taken to the Vojna Memorial in the former communist concentration camp and uranium mines near Příbram.

[84] The previous paintings are loosely related to the graphic cycles Beasts (1999), Refugees (2000), Hunt (2000) and large-scale etchings of the series Stone and Bone (2001), inspired by the poetry of Jan Zahradníček.

[85] Accidentally discovered samizdat edition of poem Znamení moci (Signs of Power)[note 2] by Jan Zahradníček provided Sozanský with a new source of inspiration for works dealing with the spiritual legacy of prisoners of communist and Nazi concentration camps.

The project included performances by the ensembles Teatr Novogo Fronta, Boxart, Palaestra, etc., on Beckett's texts in the devastated interior of the Musical Theatre Karlín, scripted and set-designed by J.

[91] From the memorial to the victims of totalitarianism, originally created in 1990 in the Valdice Prison, which was deinstalled and partially destroyed in 2007, the torsos of human figures were transported to the former communist concentration camp Vojna in the Příbram District.

[22][93] Sozansky's active preoccupation with boxing and a number of his organised performances of struggling naked human figures have been reflected in his drawings and paintings since the 1980s (Working with the Body, Mánes 2000).

The result was a series of large-scale paintings with the dominant motif of the railroad tracks and prison buildings, where the presence of people resembles only a clutter of abstract colour patches.

[95] Sozanský's project The Twenty-Seventh Day (2010) reflects on the 60th anniversary of the staged show trials of the 1950s and directly refers to the date of the execution of Milada Horáková, Jan Buchal, Záviš Kalandra and Oldřich Pecl on 27 June 1950.

The entire project was created 30 years earlier in 1984 in a situation when the communist regime drove independent culture underground and artists lived with the feeling of permanent threat from the authorities and a network of confidents they did not know at the time.

[101] The architecture of the burnt-out building expressed well the dehumanizing conditions of the normalization regime ("execution ground of conscience") and, as a monumental cage, it suited well the intention to create a film documentary describing various existential situations there.

[note 3] In 2018, the Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region (GASK) organized the balance exhibition Signum Actus / Place of the Act, which included Sozanský's works with similar themes, from the early graphic series Job (1972) to large-format paintings dedicated to Palach and Zajíc (cycles 16.

In addition to Zahradníček, the exhibition also commemorated Ivan Martin Jirous, Milada Horáková and Záviš Kalandra in the form of sculptures, photo collages and acrylic paintings and drawings combined with texts.

[110] For the 30th anniversary of the fall of communism, Sozanský prepared the balance exhibition Amnesia (2019–2020) at the Municipal House in Prague, where he commemorates important victims and prisoners of Nazism (K. Čapek, E. Filla), the 1950s (Zahradníček, Horáková, Kalandra, J. Stránský), the victims of the Soviet occupation (Palach, Zajíc) and the prisoners of the communist regime during normalization (Jirous, Gruntorád, Havel) as individuals who found themselves in extreme situation and represent a moral model that should not be forgotten.

The theme of the exhibition was also related to his personal frustration with a society that has lost its original ethos of 1989 and has returned with its indifference to moral values to the stereotypes of behaviour that persisted from the normalization era.