"We had an awful lot of people coming to see us. We felt like we came as a kind of symbol of release. For example, we had an exhibition in Ostrava-Poruba, where people hadn't seen anything but exhibitions of deserving artists or those without problems, and now they saw this. At that time, they were signing a few sentences and everyone was tearing up with happiness. Because it meant that the exhibition was going to take place, that it wasn't going to be banned and that something was happening. If it hadn't been for Gorbachev's perestroika, I can't imagine what it would have been like here, because there would have been no release and everyone would have been holed up in the underground. It was really fortunate that things started to break down from inside that crazy Russia."
"The first exhibition of Tvrdohlavé was in 1987 at the People's House in Vysočany and it was unimaginable. It was not banned! And that was thanks to Mr Halík, who had a position there at the time. So we did an exhibition that was open, and we also performed as a group. Groups were forbidden back then, so that artists wouldn't join together and create a bigger force than just an individual. For a while there were no groups at all, and that's why we were formed - both as a provocation and because we felt the themes and similarities in each other's work. That was the inner impulse. The external impulse was that if we were together, we could better defend ourselves against political pressure."
"When I came to Prague at the beginning of the 1980s, in 1982 these things were happening in Poland and it was quite depressing. I remember there was a joint exhibition of things in Stromovka. There was an opening, the cops came, they searched everybody, we had to show our IDs and they banned the exhibition. Then there was an exhibition at Chmelnice [in Mutějovice] and other exhibitions that couldn't take place in official places in the centre of Prague. It started to break down after 1985, when we started to exhibit. Until then, I had not exhibited, I was only there to see the previous generations. But within the Academy, as students, we started to do our own exhibitions, which were called Confrontations and were in different studios and courtyards. It was said to be monitored, but nobody banned it anymore. But it was watched..."
Acad. painter Petr Nikl was born on 8 November 1960 in Zlín (then Gottwaldov) into the family of artists František and Libuše Nikl. He has a sister Veronika. His mother Libuše, née. Kyseláková, was a world-renowned toy designer, hir father was an academic painter who worked at the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Uherské Hradiště. Petr Nikl grew up with his parents and grandparents in Zlín. In 1976-1980 he graduated from the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Uherské Hradiště, majoring in decorative painting in architecture. His parents were critical of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and after 1968 they were expelled from the party. Petr Nikl was not involved in the SSM (Czechoslovak Socialist Youth Union), which complicated his admission to the Academy of Fine Arts (AVU), where he entered for the second time in 1981. He studied painting in the studio of Arnošt Paderlík. As a student in 1982 and 1983, he witnessed the disruption of unofficial exhibitions by State Security. However, from 1984 onwards, he exhibited unofficially together with other young artists at exhibitions called Confrontations, which were no longer banned. In 1987 he became a founding member of the Tvrdohlaví art group, and the following year, 1988, he had to enlist for a year’s military service. During the 1990s, Petr Nikl began to experiment with figurative work and assemblages, reflecting on the 1960s. In the mid-1990s he began to work in experimental theatre at the Archa Theatre. In 1995 he received the Jindřich Chalupecký Award, which enabled him to spend a quarter of a year in San Francisco at the Headlands Center for the Arts. He also spent time in New York and Vermont. His approach to art is characterized by play and improvisation, reflecting his fascination with chance and spontaneity, and his openness to dialogue with the viewer. Petr Nikl is also the author of numerous books and a Magnesia Litera award winner. He lived in Prague in 2024.
