Jaroslav Krbůšek

* 1952

  • "Very soon, this paper appeared on the notice board in the TOS Hostivař – the one as I tore from the pushpin, so there was still the hole from it - and it was said there, how really crucial and important it is, the call to the February 1948. And how those wonderful tomorrows and things like that await us. Finally, it was written there: 'Communicate your ideas and suggestions to the nearest party union or union officials or economic workers. They will be used to form a factory-wide statements.' They just challenged me there with this paper to comment on that February 1948 statement. So, I walked around for about a week, I thought: Damn, when they actually challenge me to say something I think about it! So, I sat down at home and wrote a rather dense text that I brought to the factory. And I thought I'd let some people read it about whom I knew that they could sign it, and that at twelve o'clock or after lunch or half past one I'd take it to the appropriate organizations or to the Communist Party chairman in that TOS Hostivař.”

  • "It often happened that immediately after the opening, for example in a week or three days, in four days, Comrade Křížová forbade it. She always came up with a reason. Maybe there was an exhibition by Eva Kmentová and in the paper that I gave her, it was written that five or I don't know ten heads, bronze heads would be exhibited there, on some stands. She came there and said: 'Comrade Krbůšek, they are not heads, they are saints, they have a glory behind their heads. I forbid it immediately.' Or there was one of Jiří David's first exhibitions. And there were such large-format drawings hung between those glasses. And there was a mountain in one of those drawings, and an angel was flying over that mountain. The angel was naked. Then the others or the employees told me that Comrade Křížová had her coffee brought to the foyer where it was happening, and she allegedly stirred coffee, looked up, stopped stirring and said, 'What kind of genitals is there? It has to be taken it off immediately!' And like that. Sometimes it happened that there - from the beginning - when they needed to ban it, they sent an old lady with a cane who was allegedly a former headmaster of a school, and she started shouting there, for example at the exhibition of Čestmír Kafka, shouting the stuff that is exhibited here is provoking today's youth to violence. And she just started fencing there with her stick, and in the end she achieved that it got it banned.”

  • "They came from that side of the Jeseníky Mountains' - Polish soldiers and Polish tanks arrived. And I remember that at such the first big crossroads in Šumperk, on the way down from the so-called Holubí vrch, from those mountains, to Šumperk, a big truck arrived and someone, the driver, stopped it in the middle of the crossroads, locked it and left. The tanks stopped, then for a long time - I saw that - the soldiers discussed for a long time, and finally the first tank just crashed into the truck and pushed it all away, of course the tank destroyed it. And the tanks drove into the so-called Stalin Square, which is still there, it is not called Stalin´s, Stalin square was flooded red many times, and there was already a crowd of people who did not want to let them into the city. They were only released when the first one - there was probably a commander - moved the tank to the edge of the road where the cars were parked, and he ran over all those cars like that. Of course, the people ran away. And then the tanks entered the city and thus began the occupation by the Red Army, which lasted until the Russians left the state and from Sumperk, because there was a large tank base in Sumperk."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 12.08.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 02:00:34
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 23.09.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 43:10
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
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He worked as a laborer, exhibiting works of forbidden artists in his spare time

Jaroslav Krbůšek in 2021
Jaroslav Krbůšek in 2021
photo: During the filming

He was born in 1952 in Ústí nad Labem. He grew up in Šumperk, where in August 1968 he watched the arrival of Polish tanks. He trained as a machine toolman, got married and in 1978 moved with his family to Prague. There he met people from the Jazz section and actively collaborated with them. After the banning of the Jazz Section, he found a room in the foyer of the Opatov Cultural Center, in which he began to organize exhibitions of artists who could not exhibit elsewhere. A total of 111 of them took place, in addition to the openings, there were also meetings of writers and other cultural events. Samizdat “jednolisty” (a single paper) with texts by leading theorists were also published at the exhibitions. Some of the events were banned by the authorities, but the gallery functioned intermittently until 1992. After that, Jaroslav Krbůšek operated the Gallery called Ruce and from 1995 he ran the Václav Špála Gallery. In 1989, he was also tried by the communist regime for reading his reaction to the proclamation of the corporate committee on the anniversary of the so-called Victorious February at a working meeting in TOS Hostivař, where he was employed. His fellow workers defended him, and several of them were briefly detained with him. In October 1989, he was acquitted by a court.