“I studied under Professor Kybal, who did textiles. I was there for five semesters, and during that time the school changed because 1948 came up. The Ministry of Education redid the whole school system. The Party redid everything. As I mentioned before, how everyone had to be in some category, then the professors, who had taken a relaxed approach, as it always was and used to be at universities, suddenly had to teach exactly within the limits of their subject and were not allowed to extend over into what someone else taught. But it didn’t use to be like that. The lessons were more diverse to allow the students to learn more, and the subjects had overlap. From then on Kybal was not allowed to make tapestries at the school, he couldn’t make printed textiles...”
“I entered two of my designs, and two designs were provided by Benš, except Benš only scribbled them in minute and Kadlec refined and enlarged them. And my design won. But all three of us were signed under all of them. This caused the somewhat unpleasant situation that I was named as one of the three authors of the fountain that I had made up myself. But I reckoned that I wouldn’t have gotten the chance without Benš anyway. So I didn’t worry about it too much, and I reckoned okay, it’s the three of us. I was severely lacking in self-confidence after my graduation, but after this success I reckoned that if I designed this and it won a world-wide award, then I guess I’m not that incapable and there’s no need to maintain an inferiority complex.”
“I had those opinions as well, pretty much. The left-wing ones. [Q: Why? What influenced you to have such opinions?] Because I couldn’t see anything else around me. Remember that all the art academies, and the faculty of arts as well, were left-wing. The teachers and the students. Everyone. [Q: And your parents?] They too, of course. And all the professors at the academy. I’m not sure, but perhaps Svolinský and Kaplický were different. But I’m not sure of that. If someone didn’t support the Communists, he’d be suspicious. To begin with I excused myself from membership in the Party by saying that I had to babysit my little sister and that I didn’t have the time to attend all those evening meetings, so they let me be, but I joined in the end. It seemed there wasn’t any other way about it. [Q: What do you mean?] There wasn’t any other means of getting a decent living except by being in the Party.”
“People who didn’t want trouble, because they wouldn’t earn enough for a bit of salty water otherwise, kept to the facts. They had to adapt. For instance, I had always liked bright colours. My mum, whose painting drew on Post-Impressionism, had bought French and Dutch paints in bygone days, and those were all radiant, bright green, and so on. That got the comrades’ knickers in a twist. They had to have everything in brown, beige, in neutral shades. It upset them to see anything that deviated from the standard.”
“I didn’t have a job, because I wasn’t allowed to do anything. When they later calculated how much I should get for my pension, they found that some years I hadn’t earned a single crown. But the worst was that I got into a terrible situation with regard to my parents, who started off really enthusiastic about 1968 only to eat their humble little pie afterwards. We became dangerous to them because their cadre assessment [political profile - trans.] was impeded by the fact that both of us were outlawed.”
“As soon as we heard in the radio what had happened in National Avenue, I immediately worked out that all the artists would go to Mánes. That was intuition based on practice, because otherwise we only went there for those stupid committees. In short, I went to Mánes, and there really was a meeting there, where we agreed to go on strike. Then it turned into a kind of press centre. Mostly it was painters, but other people came too, film makers or people from the neighbourhood. They were as busy as bees, they kept coming up with ideas for what to print - the reports started out small and then got bigger. Simply, those who knew their way about and were competent to speak about something concentrated there. Then there were the artists and graphic designers, who put into some kind of printable form.”
Dana Hlobilová was born on 21 May 1928 in Přerov, into the family of the composer Emil Hlobil and the artist Marie Hlobilová, née Mrkvičková. The family lived in Tábor but then moved to Prague, where they built themselves a villa in the mid-1930s. In 1946-1951 the witness studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague; she began in Antonín Kybal’s class of textile art, but when the Communists came to power in 1948, the situation at the school took a definite turn to the worse, and so after five semesters of study she switched to Josef Novák’s art for children class. To be allowed to fulfil her artistic career, she followed her left-wing parents and classmates and joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC) in 1951. She married the architect Jaroslav Kadlec, who had studied under Professor Adolf Benš. In 1957 she and her husband completed the first big commissions for the design of a representative shop with exclusive glass and porcelain goods on the National Avenue in Prague and in Karlovy Vary. That same year they were invited by Adolf Benš to collaborate on the draft of three works for the Expo 58 world fair. In the end, Dana Hlobilová’s glass fountain design was chosen for the actual display. The piece enjoyed worldwide success but was attributed as a joint design of all three of the collaborators; Dana Hlobilová confirmed her authorship fifty years later when reconstructing the fountain, which is now on display in the National Technical Museum. She proposed and created artwork for public spaces, she did drawing and painting. In 1969 she quit the CPC, which resulted in her being denied commissions and job opportunities. She married twice. Her second husband was the artistic blacksmith Oldřich Vlach. She took part in the revolutionary events of November 1989 in Mánes, Prague.
