Karol Žižkovský

* 1938

  • "Of course they invited me to the Ministry of Culture. Two gentlemen were sitting there. The office door said they were two lawyers, but they were definitely two employees of the Ministry of the Interior. When we started publishing bibliophile editions - that is, the first Biblos files, and later bibliophile editions - they invited me and explained that for now they only knew about me, and as soon as someone told on us or we stepped too deep into a world forbidden to this Republic, it would be the end of me and my colleague. I was making a fool of myself, but they weren't that stupid. The people who do this are educated and they're not dumb. They showed me the Biblos editions we had done so far and said, 'We have them all here. Someone will buy them from you and show it to us immediately and we will store it here. So everything is known about you.' Suddenly you feel that something is happening around you and you have to be slightly cautious. But because I was young, I was not very careful. Or, better said, I wasn't too careful. I didn't succumb to fear unnecessarily ahead of time."

  • "Then when we organised the same exhibition with Pavlo Roučka and Oldřich Kulhánek in České Budějovice at the local Centre (there was this huge hall, a concert was taking place there, we installed the exhibition and it was supposed to stay there for about three weeks), two gentlemen came [ from the State Security] and it looked like they were ready to investigate it, because there was a print by Oldřich Kulhánek that depicted these naked athletes, who were in fact soldiers. They were obviously armed. There were five figures like the five armies, that was the first hint. And one had a watch on his leg. And as was widely known, Russian soldiers would steal watches and bicycles after the war. It was their kind of hobby. I don’t blame them - they didn't have them, so they wanted them... And what is looted at war can be taken, that was always the case. [One of the athletes] had put the watch on his legs like this. Olda had added a watch on the leg of a naked guy, and the State Security guys said: 'We know very well what this means! Now we're going to investigate.' And just imagine - I consider it a miracle! – there was this gentleman who spoke good Russian, who approached us and told one of the State Security guys and the director, who must have been there, that he liked it very much and that he would like to hold the exhibition in Moscow. This was incredible! And yet it’s true. And when he said this, the State Security guys stared at us with their mouths wide open, and then whispered in my ear: 'Well, at least take the guy with the watch down, do you understand? Put something else up instead.'"

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    C. de Gaulla 13, Praha 6, 16.12.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:25:24
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    C. de Gaulla 13, Praha 6, 06.01.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:24:42
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 3

    C. de Gaulla 13, Praha 6, 20.01.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:01:20
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 4

    C. de Gaulla 13, Praha 6, 01.03.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:38:30
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 5

    C. de Gaulla 13, Praha 6, 22.03.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:37:21
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Anyone who hadn‘t gone through their own transformation, cannot honestly talk about what was happening here.

Karol Žižkovský during his military service (1957 to 1959)
Karol Žižkovský during his military service (1957 to 1959)
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Karol Žižkovský (born July 12, 1938 in Levoča) studied geology and made his living from geology until 1998. At the same time, he devoted practically all his life to collecting prints, journalism and the organization of cultural events. In 1963 he joined the Society of Ex Libris Collectors and Friends. Over time, he started giving lectures about selected artists, write articles about artists for various periodicals (including Čtenář (The Reader), Sítotisk a serigrafie (Screen Printing and Serigraphy), Panorama, Typografie (Typography) or Nové knihy (New Books)), and organize and launch exhibitions in Prague and around the country. In 1972, he started publishing a bibliophile edition of Biblos alongside Josef Runštuk. His publishing activity was monitored by the State Security, but despite warnings, he continued in this activity. When organizing exhibitions, he also tried to support artists who were not perceived positively by the authorities. As a non-party member, he was obliged to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, but he joined the Czech People‘s Party instead. After the Velvet Revolution, he established a close and long-term collaboration with the renewed Association of Czech Graphic Artists Hollar and in its gallery he would launch up to seven exhibitions every year. Later on he collaborated with the Hotel Villa as curator of regular graphics exhibitions. In addition to journalistic articles and texts of fiction (e.g. a collection of short stories called Elixir of Life and his memoirs entitled Memory Loss? The Unusual and Unusual Memories of a Collector), he also wrote monographs on Daniel and Karel Beneš, Eva Hašková and Jan Maget, Petr Melan and Jindřich Pileček.