They wouldn’t let me go back to France for a year.
Download image
Vlasta Voskovcová was born in Pelhřimov on 12 May 1950. She grew up in Třebíč where she graduated high school in 1968. She left Czechoslovakia one year after the August 1968 occupation, before the borders were closed. She studied painting at the Beaux Arts School in Paris from 1970 to 1974. She returned to Czechoslovakia after the amnesty for émigrés in 1974 to take care of family affairs. However, she was arrested at Ruzyně airport and then prosecuted for emigration. The police even tried to charge her with prostitution. She was only allowed to leave Czechoslovakia a year later on the basis of a presidential pardon and an intervention from France; by then, she had been a French citizen. Together with her husband Prokop Voskovec, she worked with the Svědectví (Testimony) magazine and was involved in the activities of the Ford Foundation in support of intellectuals in Eastern Europe. She still exhibits her paintings in France, Belgium and the Czech Republic.
