Jiří Sozanský

* 1946

  • “I heard about Václav Havel sometime in the early 1980s. I didn’t know much before that. I hadn’t heard much about him, I didn’t know his plays from the 1960s, quite honestly, it had missed me completely. But then from time to time I came upon some statement, some text material, the letter to Husák, and so on. That made a huge impression on me. So Pepík Kordík arranged for me to meet him in 1984 or 85. I invited him to my studio, he brought me a book with his autograph, I gave him some drawing as a present. So we made our acquaintance and met on the odd occasion.”

  • “The atmosphere here in August was as thick as soup. It was clear that something would happen. But I wasn’t one of the prescient kind, I just listened to the chirping, and I was one of the dunces who had complete faith in Dubček’s group and cheered for them. At the time I was doing a holiday job in Kladno. If I said before that I’d never met such dolts as at the construction sites, in Kladno the situation was quite the opposite. There were people there who had been doing forced labour since the fifties, following some kind of punishment. Mostly Prague people, who enriched the Kladno locals - who were mostly staunch Communists - with their intellect and outlook. And the surprising thing was that I found then that workers bought books, read newspapers, held debates, and had opinions. I experienced that for the first time in my life.”

  • “Prague was actually kind of a cultural ghetto, and it had all the advantages and disadvantages of a ghetto. The advantage was that people supported each other, relied on each other; the disadvantage was that negative news spread quickly and was taken as fact. And over time there was more and more of the negative. And that kind of made you feel like you had your back to the wall, that there’s nothing to be done, that you’re helpless. And that wasn’t completely true. So a lot of people often just gave up their fights with those who had the power, simply because they thought it was hopeless. But I sometimes went into those fights.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 01.03.2016

    (audio)
    délka: 02:01:33
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Fates of Artists in Communist Czechoslovakia
  • 2

    Praha, 14.03.2016

    (audio)
    délka: 02:11:55
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Fates of Artists in Communist Czechoslovakia
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I was a loner who had to take care of himself

Portrét současný 2
Portrét současný 2
zdroj: autor natáčení

Jiří Sozanský was born on 27 June 1946; he grew up in the centre of Prague, raised only by his mother. Because she was hard put to earn a living for them, he practically lived on the street. He trained as a bricklayer. When he was twelve he took an interest in art - he attended a drawing course, and so in 1967, although just a worker without secondary-school education, he was accepted to the Academy of Fine Arts. While studying there he experienced disillusionment from the August 1968 occupation, and he began taking an interest in the political and social situation. His art focused on showing human suffering, he worked and exhibited in Terezín. He slowly came into conflict with the Communist regime. He refused commissions with Socialist themes. On the contrary, he mapped the devastation caused to the Most District by brown-coal strip-mining. He openly criticised the Union of Fine Artists, which mostly only grouped members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He was interrogated by State Security on several occasions. Because he refused to collaborate with the Communists, he struggled with financial difficulties throughout the period of their totalitarian rule and his work was practically unknown to the public.