Jiří David

* 1956

  • “We were aware of the fact that the Young World Magazine was a regime paper, and this White Crow Award was given to 'Pražský výběr' band and others like them. We thought that this could be our way to force ourselves into the official scene, yet at the same time we could avoid serving the regime. And we were quite aware of this bizarre contradiction. We didn't want to be part of the official scene, yet this White Crow prize represented it. It was quite a weird, paranoid move by us, and as Tvrdohlaví, we were aware of it. That's why we've done this Gagarin song parody while receiving the prize. Right at the start we came with this ironic take on the official structure. There was all irony and hyperbole. And I hope people who were sitting in front of us saw it in this way. People from the Sklep Theatre and others. Of course, later, as it would appear on the cover of the Mladý Světa magazine, some people who were against the official scene, the hardliners, were quite surprised that Tvrdohlaví were willing to participate in such a thing. It was hard to explain that it was all just sarcasm and hyperbole, something we would allow to be a part of, as we could refuse to participate, of course. But by doing this, we wanted to break this wall between the official scene and the unofficial. We wanted to take a different path that wouldn't support the establishment, yet we didn't want to serve as some poster-boys for the resistance. We wanted to resist by the power of our art alone. Without any slogans, declarations and things like that. But of course, we would never collaborate with power, with the official structures that were in place.”

  • “That's what we've had in common, me and Standa Diviš, as we met at the Academy, as he came from Kutná Hora and me from the Ostrava region, or Northern Bohemia maybe. So we knew nothing about Prague's underground scene, we had no connection. And people from the underground, as they all grew up in Prague, they didn't want to let anybody else in. It was difficult to reach them, as they were quite distrustful of strangers. Like those people around Topol and the Klamovka pub. And I didn't even try to push my way anywhere, as I was too shy to make friends, and that was the reason, in fact, why we decided, Standa Diviš and me, to create our own underground, as far as fine arts were concerned. That was the reason the Confrontations were born. Our generation called them “the golden youth of Prague”. We weren't the golden youth of Prague. We didn't know people and it was quite difficult to get accepted by anyone. Later, of course, we would make many friends. Standa started making music, 'Krásné nové stroje', then 'Pražská pětka' and the 'Sklep Theatre'. It would all get together, piece by piece, but it was nothing like that in the beginning. That's why the Confrontations were important to us, as we wanted to be a part of the unofficial culture as well, but we wanted to do it our own way. But by no means did we consider ourselves dissidents. We didn't even think about that, being just a couple of young lads.”

  • “Stanislav Diviš and I, and a few more friends maybe, we came up with this idea to do unofficial exhibitions. As you just couldn't show your work in public at that time. We weren't allowed to show our works outside the premises of our school. It was quite difficult. Then I got this small studio in a basement at Smíchov, there was this one room and a yard. So I thought that was the place where we should try to do this first unofficial exhibition of ours. It was during our second year at the university, in 1983/1984. We decided we would show our works we did at home, not those we had to do at school. At school you had to do figure drawing, not just things you wanted to. And of course, we would be doing our own work, at home, or in this little studio in my case. We invited some people from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design and Stanislav Diviš and I would approach some people from the Academy of Fine Arts who had the courage to put their works on display. As not everyone had the courage. The exhibition was there on Saturday and on Sunday, and it was the first of the famous 'Confrontations'. We called it 'Confrontation' and only later did we learn that there were those 'Confrontations' already in the 1960s, maybe even in the 1940s. So without knowing, we would continue in this tradition of 'Confrontations' from before. And it happened, many interesting people came, like Šimotová and other people we admired. It was on Saturday and on Sunday, and to our surprise, no one would raid the place, there was no secret police, even people at our school didn't know about it.”

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Our art wasn‘t about politics. But the communists couldn‘t understand it and that made them angry

Jiří David as a child, the 1960s
Jiří David as a child, the 1960s
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Jiří David was born on 28 August 1956 in Rumburk, but till his sixth birthday, he was living in Dolní Poustevna, a small town in Northern Bohemia. His grandfather, Jiří David, lost his mother in Vienna as just a three-years-old and never got to know his father. As a qualified bookbinder he had been running his own business till the 1948 coup. At the same time, witness‘ father, Zdeněk, was expelled from university due to his participation on an anti-communist protest in Nerudova Street in Prague. Jiří David‘s mother, Darija, was born in Slovenia. Before enrolling at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, the witness had been studying at railway secondary school in Děčín and secondary technical school of engineering in Ostrava. Seven times he had applied for admission to the Academy, doing blue collar jobs in Ostrava‘s ironworks. While at the Academy, with Stanislav Diviš, he was organizing unofficial exhibitions of student‘s works known as ‚Konfrontace‘ (‚Confrontation‘). In 1987, they founded ‚Tvrdohlaví‘ (‚The Stubborn Ones‘) art group and Jiří David‘s works were exhibited abroad even before the Velvet Revolution. After the group‘s breakup, he co-founded MXM, a private art gallery in Prague. From 1995 to 2001, he led the school of visual communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, then, after being forced to resign, he taught at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague till 2019. In 2015, he was selected to represent Czech Republic at the Venice Biennale.