Jiří Jun

* 1942

  • “So just for a while I worked as a porcelain painter in Okrouhlice, where I was so lucky there was a secretary of the director, a certain Ms. Nohová, who got me in touch with Jan Zrzavý. And back then I did not know, how big a painter he was, I was just at my teenage. And so I was invited to come to visit him. As a boy, of course, to show him something. So I painted the nightlife in New York, so that he could see, Chicago and so on. So I brought it to present myself to Jan Zrzavý. Well and he did not say: ‚You silly teenager, what are you showing me here, such silly stuff. Look at the nature, the stones all around you. The bludgeoned stones that the glacier has fallen into…‘ Nothing like that. He looked at the paintings, closed the portfolio and said: ‚Ok, that will do.´”

  • “Well and of course, when I got to the applied arts school then and these anabasis ended, as I was not a good porcelain painter, I did not enjoy that and was preparing myself to the studies. And when I got to the school, it was a wonderful world, as we did not have to call our professors ‚comrade‘. That was the time when the teacher became comrade and no one could address him or her otherwise. And for us it was still Mr. and Ms. professor. And so I finished studies. But get ready for the fatal blast, as they say everything bad is worthwhile for something else and back then I realised it was rather bit truth. The fatal blast as I was in the last year of school in 1962 and I walked in the hallway, the director walked from the other side and passing me he just commented: ‚You should not even apply to high school. If I had known, you would not even finished here.‘ I got startled and asked: ‚But why, when I am one of the best here and should not apply to study further?‘ Well and that was the past, my father was an entrepreneur, my sister emigrated and I did not join the Youth association. And all together meant I was banned to study high school tough I was the best in the atelier.”

  • "I remember they came to me once to sign the Anti-Charter. And I asked: ´What kind of Anti-Charter?´And they said: ´Well you sign our Anti-Charter.´´And you know what, I will sign it if you give me the Charter to read. I don´t know what it is. And so they left again."

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    u pamětníka doma, 18.04.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 01:01:07
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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You got to live the time such as it is

Jiří Jun was born in 1942 in Světlá nad Sázavou, where he also spent his childhood. At the time, when he worked as a porcelain painter in Okrouhlice, he met Jan Zrzavý, who helped him prepare for studies at the secondary school of Applied Arts. Yet due to his origin he could not apply to the high school due to his origins. For thirty years he then worked as a artist in Sokolovská uhelná. At the beginning of 1970s he refused to sign the Anti-chart and had to face allegations of the dissolution of the Socialist Republic. During the velvet revolution he actively participated in organising discussions in Karlovy Vary and got engaged in the Civil Forum. All his life his artistic production has been most essential and by today he was exhibiting in various galleries in the Czech Republic.