He looked down on occupied Prague from the roof of Strahov. Below, he heard gunfire

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Oldřich Plíva was born on 4 June 1946 in Mšeno nad Nisou. His father Oldřich worked in a photographic studio in Jablonec nad Nisou, his mother Julie, née Ullwerová, was a babysitter for children, later she worked in his father’s photo studio. He had an older brother Petr. After primary school, he entered the Secondary School of Glass Arts in Železný Brod and after graduating he entered the Atelier of Glass Sculpture at the University of Applied Arts in Prague, where he successfully completed his studies in 1971. He moved back to Jablonec nad Nisou and began working with the organisations Skloexport and Artcentrum, which enabled freelance artists to distribute their works abroad. His glass sculptures were commissioned by galleries both at home and abroad, and he also had a number of commissions for public spaces. Thanks to a working trip to an exhibition in Corning, USA in 1979, he was able to travel around part of America with several friends. In 1989, he and Zdeněk Lhotský privatized part of the Železnobrodské sklo (ŽBS) company, where he worked for a year and a half, after which he returned to the ranks of freelance artists. He was married once, he and his wife had two daughters, but they divorced. In 2023 he lived in Jablonec nad Nisou and was still actively creating, mostly working on collecting material for his own art archive. The story of the witness could be recorded thanks to the support of a grant from the Statutory City of Jablonec nad Nisou in 2023.