Doc. Václav Stratil

* 1950

  • “It lasted for a year, from February to February. After five interrogations they took me to a field and beat me up in a very nasty way. I was to freeze or bleed to death there. A man from the village found me and took me to a hospital. Had he not found me, I would have died.”

  • “The paper for collaboration lay in front of me on the table. Had I signed it, they would have left me alone. I would have popped in time to time and talked to them. I would not have had to disclose anything to them. But I could not do it on principle. They wanted collaboration, naturally.”

  • “I had a joint and some whisky and when they asked me to play, I played the song Sieg Heil, Baby. A [Josef] Klíma asks me what about Hitler. I tell him, ‘I like Adolf Hitler because he was a genius, although he was ill. Who achieved something like him? Only a few people did!’ Some lady got offended and kept mailing the rectorate of to sack me. The dean did not withstand the pressure, he just let me finish the term and then I left.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 05.02.2017

    (audio)
    délka: 02:11:32
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Fates of Artists in Communist Czechoslovakia
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I make visual poetry

stratil_archivni.jpg (historic)
Doc. Václav Stratil
zdroj: Současná: Post Bellum, dobová: archiv pamětníka

Václav Alois Stratil was born on October 7, 1950, in Olomouc to the painter Vladimíra and grammar school teacher Václav Stratil. He has brothers Jiří, Jan and sister Ludmila. On graduation from the Grammar School of Jan Opletal in Litovel he studied at the Faculty of Arts, Palacky University Olomouc, where he specialised in pedagogics for adults. After graduation he worked as a methodist for amateur artists, art teacher, night guard and boiler operator. Since 1975 he exhibited his art in flats and studios in Olomouc and the surrounding area. In the early 1980 he was approached by the Secret Police who wanted to recruit him as an agent. When he was interrogated for the last time, he was beaten and left in a field. When employed as a night guard in the National Gallery in Prague in 1983, he already made large ink drawings. He made himself a name by an exhibition in the studio of M. Titlová in Prague in 1984, banned by the police after just a week. He had more exhibitions in culture centres and clubs. In the Olomouc gallery Pod podloubím, which opened on November 17, 1989, he saw the fall of socialism. Since then he has exhibited both in the Czech Republic and abroad. Alongside drawings he made photo-performances in community studios, an activity in which he has continued ever since. The Monastical Patient cycle is the most famous of them. From 1998 to 2015 he was the dead of the Department of Drawing and then the Department of Intermedia at the Faculty of Arts, VUT Brno, where he was appointed the associate professor. In 2003 he returned to painting and painted until 2016. Due to a controversy with fascist symbols on the Prima TV channel, his contract at the Faculty was not renewed. He lives and works in Brno. Besides sons Lojza and Štefan with his wife Jarmila he has a five-year-old son with his current wife Tereza.