Jiří Kornatovský

“I had spent my childhood in my hometown of Plasy where there is the now-famous, then-forgotten and derelict monastery. The presence of this building and its whole ambience was so impressive that I was attracted to it already as a child. What is more, we have had classes in there for two or three years. A new school was being built, they placed us directly inside the monastery and we sometimes felt as inmates. The everyday presence and influence of Santini’s and Dientzenhofer’s architecture… Baroque had certain dimensions to it and it would enter us somehow inadvertently. I think this was the most natural and best way to find the foundations on which one then creates a self-image.”

“Naturally, everyone – especially those Central Europeans here – has a desire to go to America, to the West. When I got there and received answers on what is happening with my works, it liberated me. Only at the moment of liberation does one become ready to do what he or she really is. And even – which is paradoxical – can one do not what the world would like them to do or should like them to do but what one really is, a Czech person. One invents new qualities and beauty and value of this Czech spot…”

“The Russian tanks passed by and suddenly: ‘Come on guys, there will be some weapons there’. Because one of the tanks had fallen down the slope and we were there when it happened. But suddenly, being fifteen years old, I have had quite a different experience from the one of an arriving occupying army. Suddenly I saw the capsized tank and dead soldiers who have a while ago looked around, asking the locals in broken Russians for the way because they got lost – and suddenly, they lay dead there. One’s mind starts working in different ways, and the reflecting becomes more general, about war… I don’t want to generalize too much or sound important but my opinion had changed back there…”

“I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to exhibit in Špála’s Gallery and in Nová Síň shortly after the revolution. These were such important moments for my work… It was also related to me being in a hospital, going to Prague, working, it was more complicated than that… But these were such important moments that they determined my further progress and striving. It was defining in the sense of making me work on things for two galleries which I at that time had found very significant. I gave it all I had back then. My most important works of art have been created there. To my knowledge, the gallery was at the time administered by Marcela Pánková who worked on its projects with another colleague of hers. They had a 1+1 project, one of them would invite a German and the other one a Czech artist. I was the selected Czech artist and therefore had half of Špála’s Gallery for myself. This had such an impact on everything that I did ever since. Five or seven drawings have been created there which were not thematic but which were so energetic that they gave birth to some basic archetypal shapes with which I had worked instinctively, knowingly or not knowingly, in the next years. Since my input into it was so strong, it had lasted for ten to fifteen years.”