Jiří Jun

“So just for a while I worked as a porcelain painter in Okrouhlice, where I was so lucky there was a secretary of the director, a certain Ms. Nohová, who got me in touch with Jan Zrzavý. And back then I did not know, how big a painter he was, I was just at my teenage. And so I was invited to come to visit him. As a boy, of course, to show him something. So I painted the nightlife in New York, so that he could see, Chicago and so on. So I brought it to present myself to Jan Zrzavý. Well and he did not say: ‚You silly teenager, what are you showing me here, such silly stuff. Look at the nature, the stones all around you. The bludgeoned stones that the glacier has fallen into…‘ Nothing like that. He looked at the paintings, closed the portfolio and said: ‚Ok, that will do.´”

“Well and of course, when I got to the applied arts school then and these anabasis ended, as I was not a good porcelain painter, I did not enjoy that and was preparing myself to the studies. And when I got to the school, it was a wonderful world, as we did not have to call our professors ‚comrade‘. That was the time when the teacher became comrade and no one could address him or her otherwise. And for us it was still Mr. and Ms. professor. And so I finished studies. But get ready for the fatal blast, as they say everything bad is worthwhile for something else and back then I realised it was rather bit truth. The fatal blast as I was in the last year of school in 1962 and I walked in the hallway, the director walked from the other side and passing me he just commented: ‚You should not even apply to high school. If I had known, you would not even finished here.‘ I got startled and asked: ‚But why, when I am one of the best here and should not apply to study further?‘ Well and that was the past, my father was an entrepreneur, my sister emigrated and I did not join the Youth association. And all together meant I was banned to study high school tough I was the best in the atelier.”