Vladimír Škoda

* 1942

  • “My wife and I decided to get married. I tried to find out how to do it - they informed me at the consulate that they wouldn’t marry us unless I brought them my birth certificate. So I went to the Czech embassy, where they refused to issue me the document. They told me to have the wedding in Prague. That was out of the question, of course. But the bride’s father wanted her to marry, and so he went to see a friend of his who was a lawyer. His friend told me: ‘Why, your papers were burnt!’ I asked: ‘How?’ - ‘Oh, they just burnt.’”

  • “My wife and I went to visit my parents in Czechoslovakia straight after the marriage. A man came by in the morning and issued me a formal summons to the Tile House [a nickname for the State Security headquarters in Bartolomějská Street, Prague, due to its tiled facade - trans.]. That was my first ever interrogation. It was really very unpleasant. They basically wanted me to snitch on emigrants. They started questioning me. The good guy sat behind the desk, and I had to look into the light coming through the window, so I couldn’t see properly. The bad guy sat behind me and yelled that I was lying to them. Then they asked me what I had done on this and this day. It was clear that someone had been snitching on me.”

  • “Around that time I realised that no one wanted me here. I even started taking an interest in stage design, but they didn’t want me there either. I knew I had to make a radical change. Back then I bought a Unionist [Socialist Youth Union - trans.] exit permit to Paris from one Unionist girl - that was in sixty-seven. So I went to Paris for a week with the Unionists. I decided to do what Gutfreund, Kupka, Šíma, Zrzavý, and other Czech artists had done. I’d just leave. It wasn’t that simple, of course, but I put that goal in my head in sixty-six, and I was interested in nothing else.”

  • “I walked through the streets, with my rucksack still on my back - there was nowhere for me to put it. That was about a month after I had arrived in Paris. The front pages of newspapers blared at me with a photo of Wenceslaus Square and a tank. Back then I couldn’t speak a word of French, and I naively presumed that they were shooting some World War II film in Prague. I walked around Paris like that for two three days until I met a Czech who explained what was going on.”

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    Praha, 20.12.2016

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I had emigrant dreams at night

Vladimír Škoda in 2016
Vladimír Škoda in 2016

Vladimír Škoda was born on 22 November 1942 in Prague. As a child he had a great affinity for drawing, mathematics, and physics, but his artistic flair was stunted at primary school, where he was forced to re-train as a right-hander. After primary school he started working as an apprentice lathe operator at ČKD Slaný. He turned to painting again, after completing his training he applied to the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague but was not accepted. This was followed by two years of military service, from 1961 to 1963. Shortly after his return he found employment as a stage hand at DISK Theatre, where he could develop his art. Realising that no one in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was interested in his works, he decided to emigrate to Paris. He achieved this goal in the summer of 1968. After a year in Grenoble, Vladimír Škoda enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. He met his future wife there, and together they won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1973, which included a two-year scholarship for both of them in Rome. Upon returning to Paris Vladimír was tenured as a professor and taught at several French universities. Vladimír Škoda’s works have been exhibited in many countries of the world. After the revolution he symbolically returned to his homeland with several exhibitions.