Jan Klos

* 1941

  • "One day he says, 'Look, Mr. Klos, you said you've been doing these animated movies all your life?' And I said, 'Well, that's over, it's finished, let's not talk about it.' "Well, I'm telling you, Mr. Klos, when they're on TV, I'm shutting it down." He topped it in a week and that's the greatest reward for me. He said: 'Yeah, so you're the animator. Look, what about the lady, what about the lady? ‘And I say, 'Well, the lady has talent and graduated as a sculptor.' - 'Sculptor? Like Lenin´s statue and all that? ‘- 'Not Lenin, she has a small furnace, and she does things like that.' He said: 'Well, Mr. Klos, an animator and a sculptor. Well yeah, you have lived life as completely useless people. ‘That's a credo! It is so perfectly formulated that I am happy to live to have seen it.”

  • “I was twice in the folk court, where all the students had to go up the hill three kilometers from school and they stood us there… His name was Hlavatý, a barber, the chairman of the district national committee. The state policemen brought in the rope-pulled tradesmen, traitors and theft of socialist property. And now they were yelling at them and judging them. In the eyes of the people, they condemned them to those jobs ... We could have had caps, and the prisoners had to take them off.”

  • “Immediately they began to engrave in the garden, immediately looking for seedlings and immediately using the neighbors´ septic for fertilizing. They had undergone the route through the Soviet Union or around the world, so they knew better. If they got food stamps, when they were employees, I don't know. There was a family in the old house. We had two rooms, there were two rooms upstairs, and the legionaries lived there, two families. Then, I don't know how long it was, someone knocked on the door at night, and that was my grandfather with my grandmother from Slovakia. They sold their business in 1947 and moved to the son-in-law. All the money they gave him, so he bought a stone quarry Pitzberk, Hanisberg. Pitzberk, it is near Žilina, in direction to Zvolen to the country. He built a beautiful wooden house there. I was there during the holidays… Suddenly, at night, my grandmother, my mom in a nightgown, stood by the gate, saying, 'Kazan, lie down!' Grandma said, 'Bělka, is that you?' - 'Mom, where did you come from?' - 'They moved us out there in Krupina. We could have a car, we have it somewhere at the train station. ‘Such a drnc drnc cililink. 'They were nice to us, but we have nowhere to go.' So mom opened up, moved us into her bed, and there my grandfather and grandmother laid down. But there was my mother´s sister with her boyfriend and a daughter behind the door.”

  • “Then we organized an exhibition in Brussels. I have a life experience when I saw Trnka with my own eyes. Although at the time I hated his illustrations, the exhibition was designed by Trnka. It was organized at this school because Fixl was his classmate. I was making big money there. I worked from three o'clock to midnight and I enjoyed it very much. It was one area of the city, the other a village, such big areas, and the composition of what it looked like when it was plowed, and tractors and horses and all that ... I had good results in material processing and form. I've always made a composition of what I imagined. The draft was sketches. One day I turned and heard such a creak of doors, typical, it's still there. And the old man came in, had such a stupid hat, and walked past the exposition. Suddenly he stopped, came back and started digging in my composition. He pushed things around. I was so pissed off, pardon me. He went back, talked to Fixl, then went through, checked it briefly... In a week he came back to consult or just visit, I don't know what it was called, and I had it rearranged again. He hit it, summed it up and straightened as he imagined it. When he left, I went to Fixl and said, 'Professor, there's an old man here and pisses me off.' And he says, 'Please don't be fooled, this is Trnka, the author.' "

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Praha , 25.02.2016

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    délka: 02:56:26
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
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    Praha, 07.12.2018

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To disappear without a trace

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zdroj: soutěž

Jan Klos was born on 26 February 1941. He spent his youth in Mělník-Mlazice. His half-grandfather, Václav Kryml, ran a road transport business in Mělník. His father, Josef Klos, founded the company Dadák and Klos in 1930s. He was engaged in the production of baskets, furniture, toys, interior equipment and exhibition spaces. In 1942 his business partner was executed during the persecutions associated with the assassination of Heydrich. Josef Klos eventually escaped probably due to family acquaintances and money. The company was renamed to Muse - Mělnik Art Works. In 1951, the family lost everything because of nationalization, and Jan Klos laughs to say that only since then he had a dad, who until then was still working and had little time left for the family. They moved to the last thing left by the communists - four-room unfinished outbuildings of the old farm. His mother, Běla, née Štípková, gave birth prematurely due to the trauma of nationalization and emigration and suffered psychological consequences for the rest of her life. Two families of the former grandfather‘s employees, Jan, two siblings and parents, the mother‘s grandparents, and the mother‘s three-member family had settled in the four rooms and the improvised room on the attic. After completing his eighth grade, Jan was given a placement at a vocational school, where he was to be trained as a carpenter. Thanks to his father and his former colleague, Viktor Fixl, however, he applied for exams at the Secondary School of Housing Design in Prague. He successfully passed the tests and studied in the department of toys and small art industry. The school participated in the realization of the Czechoslovak exhibition at Expo 58. Jan worked according to the designs of Jiří Trnka, he earned a decent income and he actually enjoyed the work. After school he could not get a job because of his cadre assessment. Finally, thanks to the intervention of Viktor Fixl, he got a job in the development department of sports and technical equipment, from which he later joined the military service. He was assigned to the auxiliary technical troops (PTP) that were soon reorganized. In 1963-1973 he worked as a puppet master at the Spejbl and Hurvínek Theater and then worked as an animator. He married the sculptor, Helena Samohelová.