"[...] on Monday at nine-thirty, at ten o'clock, the Civic Artists' Forum was formed, and the Civic Artists' Forum suddenly had the whole building at its disposal. The work started immediately: collecting money for students, printing posters... We quickly took over all the other exhibition halls in Prague, and that was a huge advantage over the theatres, [because] the exhibition halls are in the vast majority of cases by the sidewalk, they have big shop windows, and for example, Špálovka became a huge information centre for ordinary people. The artists had contacts in the printing offices and immediately produced posters themselves, which were not amateur but even on a professional level. It all took off at an absolutely incredible pace on that first day."
"A huge number of painters in particular and sculptors who were not restorers helped the restorers to make a living. They had to get something called an exemption to do that. That was a paper that had to be blessed by the fund restoration committee. My colleagues, who were reticent to take me in, got it done by asking [for an exemption on the grounds] that they weren't going to prosecute this job and that they needed help. So, I got an exemption, which was a terribly valuable piece of paper because it authorized me to do a certain type of restoration. And later on, it turned out that this was also an important thing for the restoration industry because the exemptions were also assigned independently for some work that the restorers refused to do. So dirty work, work in a stupid environment or far away from Prague, it always ended up with the outliers."
Václav Špale was born on 18 March 1950 in Mladá Boleslav. He comes from a family of a judge who was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia but was persecuted because of his origins. After studying at the Secondary Vocational School of Fine Arts in Prague (1966-1970), he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (1971-1977) in the studio of Prof. František Jiroudek. Under Prof. Jiroudek at the Academy of Fine Arts, he also completed a postgraduate course (1982-1985). At the same time, he began working as an illustrator and restorer. In 1987, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Union of Czech Artists and participated in democratization efforts within the union’s structures. During the Velvet Revolution, he served as a member of the cultural commission of the Civic Forum Coordination Centre. Between 1992 and 2012, he was involved as a member, executive and curator in the Mánes Society of Visual Artists. In 1995, he co-founded the Serpens Association, which subsequently succeeded in reviving the space of the Libeň synagogue. At the beginning of the 1990s, he also began to focus on scenography. He participated in the production of the Husa na provázku Theatre’s Babička [Grandmother-transl.] with Jiří Pecha in the title role and the multimedia performance Archa. At the time of filming (2022), he was still active as an artist and restorer, continuing his association activities and preparing a retrospective publication focusing on his artistic work.
![Illustration of Bohumil Hrabal's book Hovory lidí [People's Conversations]](https://www.memoryofnations.eu/sites/default/files/2023-08/spale%20vaclav_B%20Hrabal%20Hovory%20lid%C3%AD%201983.jpg)