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Contents
Olga & Olga
– the filmmakers Sommerová and
·pátová speak about gentlemen
and feminism
pages 4 – 7
Women and Editorials
Women Tractor-drivers and
Lady Soldiers
– the “equality” of women under
Communism
pages 8 – 11
Strange Girl
– Iva Bittová has conquered the
world’s stages with her violin
playing and beautiful singing
pages 12 – 15
Top Models with Big Hearts
– profiles of Czech supermodels
who show us that beauty is more
than skin deep
pages 16 – 19
Airy Beauty
– the ancient art of lace making
where art is transformed into
the everyday
pages 20 – 21
I promised that I would write an
editorial on the topic of “Woman as
inspiration” and so I posed the question to myself: What would remain of
literature if its inspiration and space
for imagination was not a woman?
The answer is very little, almost nothing. Poetry wouldn’t exist, the novel
would disappear and dramas wouldn’t
be dramatic. The only literary genre to
survive would be the editorial.
Sigh. The famous Czech writer Karel âapek wrote in 1935: “I’ve never
met a woman or girl who enjoys reading newspaper editorials.” Since that
time, much has changed – almost everything in fact. However, even in this
day and age, I don’t know a single
man who knows a girl or woman who
enjoys reading newspaper editorials.
So I will focus this editorial on the
men in the audience. Men! We must
admit that not only do we search for a
woman behind every thing, we find
her behind every thing. Cherchez la
femme – is a phrase as valid for life in
the same way that “the murderer was
the gardener” is true for a mystery.
Gentlemen, do you really believe that
the first flint tools were made by some
Neanderthal as a weapon so that he
could kill a woolly mammoth? I don’t.
Looking at myself, I’d say that he made
this earthshaking invention so that even
during the Ice Age he could bask in
the glow of an appreciative Mrs Neanderthal. It was only thanks to the fact
that she got his blood boiling and kept
the fires roaring in the cave that he
was able to conquer Nature.
He certainly would have understood
that “a woman is a reflection of all of
Nature’s beauty concentrated in one
being”, although he may not have
been able to express the idea as well
as Charles Baudelaire in a woman’s
boudoir.
So what about us men? Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to come up
with a satisfactory literary definition.
We’ll have to wait. We’ll probably
have to wait until this magazine chooses
“Men as inspiration” as its theme and
a woman is invited to write the editorial to that issue – an editorial that
both women and girls will gladly read.
Sigh.
Tinity & Blanka
– Blanka Matragi is the fixed star
and SoÀa Hlaváãková the rising star
of Czech fashion design
pages 22 – 25
The Muses of Photogenie
– women as the glorified object
of photographic portrait
pages 26 – 29
Eva Fuka: “It’s my world.”
– reflections of this Czech
photographer who emigrated to
the United States
pages 30 – 33
Mosaic
– news and information from
the Czech Republic
pages 34 – 35
Vítûzslava Kaprálová
– a shooting star in Czech classical
music
pages 36 – 38
The Heart of Europe appears six times a year and presents
a picture of life in the Czech Republic. The views expressed
in the articles are those of their authors and do not necessarily
represent the official positions of the Czech government.
Material appearing in the magazine cannot be reprinted
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should be sent to the editorial office of the magazine.
Publisher, in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry of the
Czech Republic, Theo Publishing.
Editorial office:
J. Poppera 18, 530 06 Pardubice, Czech Republic
Editor-in-chief: Pavel ·míd, Art editor: Karel Nedvûd
Chairman of the Editorial Board: Vít Koláfi, Director of the
Press Section of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
spokesman for the Minister of Foreign Affairs
Members of the Editorial Board: Vûra StaÀková, Marie
Kopecká, Libu‰e Bautzová, Silvie Marková, Pavla Jedliãková, Alena Prouzová, Lucie Pilipová, Eva Ocisková,
Milan KníÏák, TomበPojar, Vít Kurfürst, Oldfiich TÛma,
Martin Krafl, Petr Vágner, Vladimír Hulec, Petr Volf,
Jan ·ilpoch, Pavel Fischer
Translation by members of the Department of English and
American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno
Lithography and print by VâT Pardubice
ISSN 1210–7727
Pavel ·rut
Poet and translator
Internet: http://www.theo.cz
Publisher’s e-mail:[email protected]
3
Olga & Olga
Both wore black, the two Olgas both
filmmakers. They had the same hairstyle – a style that was trendy back
in the era of Brigitte Bardot: one was
blonde and the other brunette. They
spoke in a similar husky voice that
comes across as sexy and at the same
time a bit seedy. Their age difference
is 35 years. During the interview they
sometimes quarreled, needling each
other in a friendly way, but flattering one
another, too. Remarkable documentary
filmmaker and outspoken feminist Olga
Sommerová (56) and her daughter, camerawoman and director Olga ·pátová
(her father is documentary filmmaker
Jan ·páta), have made three films together in the last year. Two of them,
(Ne)censurované rozhovory ((Un)censored Conversations), and Moje 20.
století (My 20th Century) about painter
Adriena ·imotová, opera singer SoÀa
âervená and writer Lenka Reinerová,
were shown on Czech Television to excellent reviews from local audiences.
4
Sommerová: One film we directed
half and half, in the second I was the
victim of Olga, who was the director,
and for the third one I took her on as a
camerawoman. Of course what my
children Olga and Jakub get away
with, no one else would dare, because I
would never hire them again.
And what do they dare to do?
THE PROFESSION
Sommerová: Jakub refuses to film
a cut I want, or he lectures me disrespectfully to the point where I feel
like a student. With Olga behind the camera it’s easier. But it’s happened a few
times that she’s gotten uppity with me.
·pátová: Mom gets really impatient
during filming when I take my time
composing a shot. With (Un)censored
Conversations (an intimate dialogue
between Olga Sommerová and Olga
·pátová) she was constantly fidgeting.
She was completely nuts.
Sommerová: She took a long time to
find the shot, and when she found it,
she kept rubbing it in for about half
an hour, on purpose to get me worked
up. I was going out of my mind, I was
screaming. And all of sudden I look at
her and see that cunning little smile.
·pátová: Only after that Mom started
being herself, sitting there with a
cigarette and peacefully gazing into
space, and suddenly she was spouting
Chekovian wisdom.
How is it to work professionally
with one’s nearest relatives?
As filmmakers, what do you think
about that phenomenon that is pre-
Olga Sommerová at work (with her husband, the famous documentary filmmaker Jan ·páta)
Interview
“Women must return to humanity its lost Eden, that precious
pearl; but first we must come to
know what lies at the bottom of
our own hearts and we must dive
down there to find it.
BoÏena Nûmcová
(1820-1862), Writer
as much explicit advice
for me as I have for
Olga. Or as much social
leverage. In that sense
I’m more useful to her.
tending to be like a documentary, the reality
show?
Sommerová: I watched
for about ten minutes. It
was boring and insulting.
There’s one thing there
that is almost sort of connected with our profession. As a documentary
filmmaker I’ve always
dreamed of being the fly on the wall
and watching what goes on in the
house. And suddenly here comes this
reality show that supposedly wants to
realize this dream. But because people
aren’t living a real life there, because
they’re forced to have artificial conflicts,
it’s irritating, inauthentic, empty.
·pátová: In (Un)censored Conversations we did this kind of little private
reality show.
Sommerová: Except that we had
actual conflicts and we have to live
with each other until death.
During the thirty-five
years that separate you,
attitudes towards sex
have changed.
ABOUT GENTLEMEN
Were you different when you were
Olga’s age?
Sommerová: She’s more mature
than I was and knows what she wants.
I didn’t. I was better-read and bettereducated, because under the Bolsheviks, camaraderie and art were
the biggest excitement; there were
no other distractions. But I realize
that even though my mother was a
wise woman, she didn’t have nearly
Sommerová: They used
to say that sex is the Mercedes of the
poor. The difference is that we were
afraid of pregnancy because there
wasn’t any good contraception; today
it’s the fear of AIDS. But I can see
clearly one generational difference. When
I was filming with seventy-, eighty-yearold men, I had the feeling they were
always happy to see a woman. They
offered compliments they were gentlemen through and through. I feel something similar out in the country. But
in the city, full of other attractions,
I have the feeling of a greater distance,
5
that guys are even afraid of girls.
I remember one of your stories, Olga,
when you and your friend Lucy went
to dancing lessons at Lucerna...
·pátová: We both wore red clothes.
They called us the “red commandos”;
I guess we were acting a bit too selfconfidently. When the dance call came
the boys went for the other girls and
we ended up standing there together
in our red clothes! We wanted to
dance, to flirt. They told us later that
they were afraid of us! We went to
the ladies’ room and just looked at
each other, aghast.
What kind of man do you
yearn for?
·pátová: I yearn for a gentle guy.
Sommerová: That’s right – a real
man has to be sensitive. Whereas
macho is as fragile as a crystal vase
that shatters with the first problem.
·pátová: In this generation the
boys are sensitive and fragile. They’re
gentlemen.
Sommerová: And I think the gentlemen
are the older ones; today gentlemen
are dying out.
What do you mean by the
term gentleman? That he helps
you into your coat, pays your bill
in the pub?
Sommerová: The male compliments
are still fun. But gentlemen are gentlemen because they’re not just interested
in themselves.
·pátová: Being a gentleman means
suppressing your own selfishness.
6
From the shooting of the documentary film Love Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow that is currently being shown
on Czech Television
Do the jokes about blondes upset you?
Sommerová: Those aren’t jokes about
blondes, but about women. And the
most horrible thing is that they’re told
by women themselves. That’s where it
starts one time I asked your dad not to
make jokes at my expense in public.
And all the time he was so funny that
I was laughing myself. But then one
time I said, enough. Women would do
a lot for themselves by rejecting that.
And women’s solidarity is important.
Alena Plavcová
Lidové noviny
Photos: TomበÎelezn˘ (Lidové noviny),
the archives of Jan ·páta, Jan Tauber
(Czech Television)
hvûzda BoÏena Nûmcová (The Immortal
Star BoÏená Nûmcová) (1997), O ãem
sní Ïeny (What Women Yearn For)
(1999), O ãem sní muÏí (What Men
Yearn For) (1999), and for the Loserfilm Studio: Konec svûta v srdci Evropy
(The End of the World in the Heart
of Europe) (2002) and MáÀa po deseti
letech (MáÀa Ten Years Later) (2003).
Between 1991 and 2002 she taught
at FAMU: for eight years from 1994
she was chair of the Department of
Documentary Filmmaking. She has
made eighty films, for which she has
earned twenty-eight awards at domestic and international film festivals.
Biography: www.loserfilm.cz.
Olga ·pátová (b. 1984)
Olga ·pátová is the daughter of the
renowned documentary filmmakers
Olga Sommerová and Jan ·páta.
She made her first documentary Sedmikrásky (Daisies) about a group of her
fellow students at the age of fourteen it
was broadcast by Czech Television as
part of the cycle “Ego.” Her fee was a
Hi-8 camera, which she used to make
more films. She studied advertising
graphics at the Secondary School of
the Advertising Arts. Here she and her
friend Lucie were their own actors and
cameramen for several short films:
Svatba (A Wedding), Kávová spoleãnost
(Coffee Society), Waiting for Godot.
Independently she has made the films
Míjení (Passing), Sama (By Myself)
(which won her eight film festival
awards), and Trojhra (Triple Game).
ON FEMINISM
I read that this century will be the
century of the woman. What does
that evoke for you?
Sommerová: Women will win their
rights step by step. And they’ll take
part in running the world. But it will be
slow, because men hold the economic,
and therefore the political power.
How do you view your mother’s
feminism?
·pátová: I don’t agree when Mom
says that women are the higher-quality
portion of humanity. If I thought so
it would make me sad. I want to live
my life with a man. And I think we’re
people, not men and women. But saying that next to a feminist Mom is
very risky.
Olga Sommerová (b. 1949)
Olga Sommerová is a graduate of
Prague’s Film Academy of the Performing Arts (FAMU). As a director for
Krátk˘ film Prague, she spent ten years
making 35-mm documentary films
for the cinema. Since the Velvet Revolution of 1989 when documentaries
stopped being shown in cinemas, she
has been making documentary films
for Czech Television.
She focuses on social and interpersonal relations, important personalities, the phenomena of social and
artistic life, feminism and this country’s
modern history.
Her best-known film titles include:
Konkurs na rok 2000 (Audition for
the Year 2000) (1979), Jednotfiídka
(One-room School) (1981), S tebou táto
(With You, Daddy) (1981), Miluj bliÏního svého (Love Thy Neighbour)
(1990), MáÀa (1992), Nesmrtelná
7
Women Tractor-drivers
and Lady Soldiers
Today I am really at a
complete loss when I read
current (often quite nostalgic) considerations by some
Czech, Russian and Polish
women about how women
had it so wonderful and
how their lives were so
much easier under Communism. Only a nostalgic longing for their lost youth
could have so badly distorted their memories. We
knew nothing about feminism or human rights, let
alone women’s rights. It
wasn’t even possible to write about these
concepts. Even a declaration of human
rights was forbidden.
D
uring the Communist Era, the
emancipation of women was limited to
an obligation to work and to act like men.
What this really meant was proving that
women could work in the same professions as men. So women tractor drivers,
crane operators and welders were glorified there were even female miners and
chimney sweeps. In reality however, these
were relatively rare. The Communist slogan
“Each according to his abilities and for
each according to his needs” was never
realized; instead the guiding slogan dur-
8
ing the first period of Communism was “Anyone who
doesn’t work doesn’t eat”.
This meant that women
who were employed were
more highly valued than
were women who were
“only” looking after their
children and households.
Women and the
Dictatorship of the
Proletariat
There was no choice in
the matter. This is why at
home in addition to my diploma from
Charles University and my doctoral degree, I also have an apprentice certificate
as a bricklayer-hod carrier and a certificate from a metalworking course. It was
believed by the working class in their political conscious that mentality of each
individual could be changed by working
in a factory or workshop; each of them
would then have enthusiasm for the
ideals of Communism. For this reason,
people, including women, were sent into
factories to be re-educated. The state,
represented by a single political party,
intruded into all types of private affairs
including childbirth. For example, during the fifties abortion was illegal and
contraception was not even available.
Photograph taken in the 1970s for the newspaper Slovácká Jiskra, the daily of the Uherské Hradis‰tû District Central Committee of the Communist Party
of Czechoslovakia by an unknown photographer
History
“It was expected that women
could carry it all off without
great difficulty: being a mother,
wife and homemaker, working
eight hours a day and hold some
public political function or office.
Surprisingly enough, I survived.”
Women secretly brought into the country
contraceptives from East Germany and
later Hungary. During the first ten years
following the Communist putsch abortion was banned totally, even in the event
that the woman had been raped. Such a
woman was forced to carry the foetus to
term and then surrender the child to the
state to be reared. It was only after twelve
years of the dictatorship of the proletariat
(as this period was officially known) that
it was possible to get an abortion; but in
order to do so, a woman had to go to a
public meeting of the “abortion committee”, which included both doctors and
politically conscious women from the
local block organization of the Communist Party. If the father of the child did
not agree to the abortion, a woman could
not make the decision herself. But it was
at least some progress, even if it did not
add to a woman’s dignity.
The emancipation of women was based
on the Marxist-Leninist principle that
each individual is liberated through their
inclusion in the production process. The
individual can only be transformed into
a free and fully equal person through
participating in the public sector – first
and foremost in production – in the joint
A powerless woman in the clutches of Communist
justice – the trial of Milada Horáková (verdict:
guilty, sentence: death) in the 1950s
building of a socialist society. Using this
principle, a woman who did not have
children and who was supported by her
husband could be charged with the crime
of a “parasitic way of life.” People normally got around this situation with a
medical report stating that the woman
was either ill or incapable of working.
This is why during the Communist era
we could boast that 97.8 percent of all
women who were capable of working
were in the labour force. This was the
reality of our lives.
When I first began to attend primary
school, there were only three children
whose mothers worked outside the home.
The school’s director marked these
children as public welfare cases. They
were from families so poor that their
mothers had to work to make ends meet.
When I finished my secondary school
studies at the age of eighteen, only three
of the students who graduated with me
had mothers who did not work outside
the home. Their cases were also taken
note of as something negative for the
child, because to remain as a homemaker
was considered a bourgeois relic and the
child of such a family was unlikely to receive the all-important recommendation
for university admission. By this time, my
mother was also working. Even though
my father was a doctor, he was unable to
support his wife and two children (especially after all of the nationalization of
private property) on his salary alone.
The double shift
In the early 1960s, a woman was still
required to return to her job no later than
three months after the birth of her child.
She could however leave her child in the
company nursery and if she was still nursing, she could take two fifteen minute
breaks during her eight-hour shift to go
9
and nurse her infant. I can still recall how
even before six in the morning, mothers
would be pushing their prams with children
still half asleep down our street and how
my mother (who was born in 1902 and
was a schoolmate of Milada Horáková,
who was executed by the Communists in
the 1950s) commented: “This is their socialism.” This upset me because I myself
saw this contradiction and yet I hoped
that the socialism I lived under would be
good and just. There was also something
of a generational conflict between mother
and daughter. For that reason (and others),
I would like to emphasize here that Czechoslovak-style Communism did also
have positive impacts on women. Not
only were women brought into public
life but the education of women was also
increased in a fundamental way. It was
widely believed that the World War III
would soon break out. Here in Czechoslovakia, which was a vassal – or in more
modern terms a satellite – of the Soviet
Union, the focus was primarily on expanding heavy industry and mining coal
and uranium. And so during the fifties
women replaced men as a large pool of
unskilled labour. In time, women also
began to gain higher qualifications. The
proportion of men and women in Czechoslovakia with secondary or tertiary education soon became equal. The self-confidence of women also increased and they
soon came to consider the “double shift”
(working as a homemaker and holding
down a job at the same time) as a given.
A
t the time it was expected that
women could carry it all off without
great difficulty: being a mother, wife and
homemaker, working eight hours a day
and hold some public political function
or office. Surprisingly enough, I survived
along with my entire generation; in its
own way it did leave women with greater
10
bration. Younger generations however
now know that International Women’s
Day was not invented by or established
in the Soviet Union, but that it is a holiday celebrated by women all around the
world. They also know that even today
women must take an interest in their
rights and so they are once again looking
towards the holiday as a positive symbol.
Jifiina ·iklová
The editors would like to thank
Mrs Hana Netu‰ilová for her willingness
to lend the pictures used in this article.
system (or “the market economy” as it
is now more euphemistically referred to)
is developing.
What’s left?
self-confidence. But without the two incomes, it would have been very hard to
make ends meet.
Dreams of make-up
However, Czech women never stopped considering the necessity of holding
a job as something forced upon them
they dreamt of “resting” at home with
their children. They dreamt of wearing
make-up and various fashionable accoutrements; they looked longingly at glossy
foreign fashion magazines for women.
But the women in these magazines were
as stylized and unrealized as were ideals
of milkmaids and shock-workers seen in
domestic propaganda. When the borders
finally opened and these magazines and
fashion designs began to appear in large
numbers, we were only enchanted for a
short while. Young women of today, who
have been living in a “normal” democratic world for sixteen years, have begun
to reject this form of feminine culture.
Our appetites were sated by photographs and fashion shoots and it is only
now in the younger generation of women
and girls, who have had the opportunity
to see conditions in the West with their
own eyes, that an awareness of the necessity to “struggle” under a capitalist
Much remains from the era when
female tractor drivers and lady soldiers
served as role models for women: an unconsidered and non-verbalized but yet
significant emancipation, a feeling that
“we can survive almost anything”.
Linked to this is a strong resistance
to any “overarching” women’s
organizations and a distaste for
ideologies, including feminism,
which is and has been presented here as an ideology. The
majority of women explicitly reject feminism as a concept in reality however we
Czech women are so feminist that many women
in the West should be
envious.
What about International Women’s Day,
that official women’s
holiday? For a long
time it was forced upon
us as a compulsory celebration. The hated presidents
Gottwald, Novotn˘ and Husák
used this holiday to welcome
women delegates (who were
certainly not chosen by us) to
Prague Castle, shake their hands
and shower them with flowers.
This is in part why when we
were able to freely express our
views after the Velvet Revolution, we completely rejected it
– in both words and actions. Today, 8 March – International Women’s
Day – has become a good symbol for
the transformation we have undergone.
Older generations continue to reject the
holiday as a Communist-enforced cele-
11
Strange Girl
There are only a handful of Czech
musicians about whom it can be truly
said that they have really had an impact abroad. Were it not for a single
exception, all of them could be found
within the confines of classical music.
The exception is the violinist and vocalist Iva Bittová. Her truly original
music has been heard in virtually all
corners of the globe.
there in the world who also play the
violin or even more unusually, singing
violinists who more often than not
perform solo without any other instru-
T
he question may certainly be
asked: What is it about Bittová that
has led the Fortune of global success
(here of course, I am not speaking
about the glittering world of show business but rather the sphere of musical
connoisseurs who search for quality
regardless of genre) to smile upon
her? It is without doubt a combination
of factors. Profound Moravian and
Slovak roots can be seen in practically everything that Bittová does. The
complete originality of her creative
approach also plays an important role:
how many well-known singers are
12
A performance by HaDivadlo in Prague
mental accompaniment? Another important factor in her career’s continuing rise is the fact that Iva Bittová refuses to rest on her laurels and that
she is continuously searching for new
means of expression. Her enthusiasm
for her art means that she might perform one day in an opera house, the
next be found improvising with a DJ
at a techno party and the following
be in a club performing songs best
described as “chansons”. Bittová has
also shown the will to keep working
on her craft – in particular she continues to refine her skills as a violinist
under the direction of her teacher
Rudolf SÈastn˘. The result of all this
is that today Iva Bittová is one of
the Czech music scene’s best “export
items”. She plays regularly on stages
around the world, her albums are
issued by prestigious labels and she
works with top artists in a wide range
of genres.
Iva Bittová was born in 1958 into
a musical family in the northern
Moravian town of Bruntal. Her father
Music
“The violin shapes me, transforms me, fulfils me aesthetically
it shows me the best values in
relationship to music, to people
and to myself. That’s why I love it
and to love means to live”
Iva Bittová
(b. 1958), Musician
Koloman Bitto was a versatile musician who played a number of different
instruments and performed with both
folklore ensembles and operatic orchestras. Bittová often recalls how
her entire family literally lived for
music (her sister Ida Kelarová is a
very successful singer and pianist
whose primary focus is Roma folklore).
In spite of this musical background,
Iva Bittová’s first steps in the artistic
world led towards acting. In 1975
while she was a student at the conservatory in Brno, she became a member
of the now legendary avant-garde
“Goose on a String” theatre company.
She had a number of roles with this
ensemble, the most popular of which
was as “ErÏika” in the “folkloric musical” Ballad for a Bandit, which was
eventually turned into a radio play
and a film. She spent ten years in the
Goose on a String company, made a
number of films and television shows
before leaving the world of acting in
the mid-eighties when she “rediscovered” the violin – an instrument she had
learned to play as a child but eventually came to despise.
A performance in the VaÀkovka club
“I had a completely different relationship to the instrument as a child and
took it as something that I had to do.
I wanted to be playing outside. I was
really unhappy and so I used a small
bruise on my neck that came from
practicing as an excuse. I was em-
barrassed by it and asked my parents
to stop the violin lessons. But then
I returned to the violin because in
my heart, I really didn’t feel like an
actress. I didn’t believe that acting
was a calling or work that would fulfil
me as music could. I then discovered
Professor SÈastn˘, who told me that
we’d have to start over from the very
beginning. Repeating violin lessons
seemed just as difficult as it’d been
when I was a child; but there was a
moment when I started to sing while
playing and a secret chamber opened
up inside me. It was a discovery
for me that at the time I didn’t fully
appreciate. I just knew that it was
what I wanted and that singing and
playing the instrument together gave
me something. Today, I recognize
this as the moment when I began to
develop in musical terms.”
I
n the mid-eighties, Iva Bittová
quickly became a fixture in Brno’s
alternative music community. One of
this group’s leading figures was the
drummer Pavel Fajt. Bittová would
13
A performance by Pavel Fajt’s band Dunaj in Chvaletice (eastern Bohemia), 1987
form a duo with him, creating a heretofore unprecedented combo that received rapturous applause from audiences
at home and subsequently abroad.
The 1987 debut album by the duo,
Bittová & Fajt remains one of the best
works to come out of the Czechoslovak
music scene during the era of totalitarianism. It is no surprise that this
album has been issued by a number
of foreign record labels.
A
longside her commitments to
the duo, in the second half of the eighties Iva Bittová began to devote her
time to rock music as the lead singer
for the Brno-based group Dunaj, who
recorded only one album. This collaboration was however a great source
of inspiration for Bittová and she rerecorded almost all of Dunaj’s repertoire ten years later for the CD Pustit
musí‰ (You’ve got to let go). But her
musical career was gradually moving
towards her becoming a solo artist.
She began to have solo concerts in the
early nineties and her repertoire from
that period was preserved forever in
1991 on her first solo album. Reissued
in 1997, it has the appropriately descriptive title of Divná sleãinka (Strange
Girl). By this time, Bittová’s reputation as a violinist had spread far beyond
this country’s or even this continent’s
borders. She was on the road with her
violin more frequently than she was in
her native Moravia.
Although elements of folklore are
clearly present in the music of Bittová
& Fajt, the reverberations of folk music
were becoming every clearer in Iva
Bittová’s musical compositions. This
can be seen on her 1995 album of
14
Christmas carols entitled Kolednice,
as well as in her first foray into the
world of classical music, 44 Duets for
Two Violins, a collection of Hungarian
folk music inspired by the composer
Béla Bartók. Playing alongside Bittová on the album was the violinist
Dorothea Keller.
During the second half of the nineties, Bittová returned to the bosom
of Brno’s alternative music scene
through her cooperation with musicians around Vladimír Václavek, Dunaj’s former bass guitarist and an original songwriter working with both
influences from ethnic and world
music and elements of minimalism. The
recording of the 1997 double album
Bilé inferno (White Inferno) led to the
forming of the group âikori. The special atmosphere of this album was
in part influenced by the fact that the
lyrics were based on poems by the important, spiritually-oriented Moravian
poets Bohuslav Reynek and Jan Skácel.
The production continues to be performed and the production is now being
prepared for a world tour. The second
project came about as a commission
for what is probably the most prestigious concert hall in the world, Carnegie
Hall in New York City. This project
brought Bittová together with the renowned instrumental ensemble Bang
on a Can All-Stars. Although this group
has traditionally focused on presenting contemporary classical music, the
Elida project (issued on the eponymous CD in 2005) has a song structure
that in places borders on a modern
chanson, a genre in which Bittová
excels not only as a singer but also as
a songwriter.
Today, Bittová appears only occasionally as a guest singer or violinist
for pop, folk or rock and roll bands.
She has appeared on albums recorded
by the Eben Brothers, JablkoÀ, Monkey Business and the singers Richard
Müller and Anna K. An original collaboration came out of Bittová’s working in a duo with DJ Javas from Brno,
where she provided the vocals for modern house-techno club remixes.
Currently Iva Bittová has only occasional solo concerts because most of
her time and energy is focused on two
major projects. In 2004, New York
City witnessed the successful premiere
of an avant-garde production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, with Bittová in
the main female role of Donna Elvira.
A
s is the case with stars from the
world of classical music, Iva Bittová’s
diary is booked up years in advance.
In recent times, she has begun to speak
about a need to rest as she has placed
the maximum effort into each and
every concert, guest appearance or recording session (something that can
be clearly seen in the quality of her
work). There is not doubt that she deserves a break, just as there can be no
doubt that her artistic restlessness will
not allow her a moment of inactivity.
Ondfiej Bezr
Photos: Jan Adamec, Bohdan Holomíãek,
Indies Records (www.indies-rec.cz)
Bittová then subtly introduced what was
for her the previously unknown element
of jazz into the âikori’s repertoire.
At that time Bittová was regularly
working with important musicians
from around the world. The exceptional cellist Tom Cora had worked on
the recording of Bílé inferno and the
album Ples upírÛ (Vampires’Ball) came
about in collaboration with the Netherlands Blaze Ensemble. Alongside Bittová’s own composition on this latter
disc are her interpretations of compositions by Leo‰ Janáãek. At home,
Bittová began to focus more intensively on classical music, especially
works by those composers for whom
folk music was a major source of inspiration. These include the previously mentioned Janáãek as well as contemporary composers such as Milo‰
·tûdroÀ and Vladimír Godár. Bittová
includes their compositions on her
“classical” albums, which are most often
recorded with the ·kampa Quartet.
15
Top Models with Big Hearts
Eva Herzigová, Karolina Kurková,
Daniela Pe‰tová, Hana Soukupová,
Paulina Porizkova, Veronika Vareková,
Tereza Maxová: on a per-capita basis,
the Czech Republic has a high percentage of successful super-models. The
Turkish warriors who invaded the southeastern Moravian border regions in the
seventeenth century imposed themselves
by force on the local gene pool, leaving
behind generations of lovely women
born of pain. Women with a full body
line and full lips, with deep eyes set
enticingly behind high cheek bones.
Women of mysterious beauty, discovered after the Velvet Revolution by eager
modelling agents and invited to the
world’s fashion stages. Besides success
and beauty, Czech models have
brought something else to the profession: the willingness to help improve
the lives of those in need. The Czech
Republic is remarkable for its many top
models who regard working on behalf
of others as their life’s mission. Czech
models are helping to change the world
for the better. We would like to introduce you to a two of them.
16
Czech Embassy, and doesn’t know
what’s going to happen. She has been
arrested for subverting the Cuban
revolution. Hidden in her clothes is a
memory chip. Fortunately, the Cuban
Helena Houdová
Rebel
Helena Houdová in Cambodia
January 2006. In a Cuban prison
sits a green-eyed, blonde-haired young
woman. She’s being screamed at in
Spanish. She’s not allowed to call the
police don’t have a clue about digital
cameras.
Our top model in Cuba was guilty
of the crime of taking photographs. He-
On her trips, Helen photographs the difficult lives of children (Nicaragua)
lena Houdová, founder of the charitable
organization Sunflower Children, was
taking pictures in the poor slums of Havana in order to document living conditions of the children there and find ways
to help. This petite twenty-six-year-old
woman works to alleviate misery in
the lives of children in ten countries
around the world. She therefore represents a grave threat to this dinosaur regime. After eleven hours Helena was
released from jail. She managed to save
the memory card, and then exhibited
the pictures at Prague’s Langhans Gallery; the exhibit was attended by former
President Václav Havel, among others.
The photographs are now being sold
with the proceeds going to the families
of Cuban political prisoners.
“And now I’m supposed to start behaving myself?” wondered this student
of physical anthropology when she was
officially crowned and donned the sash
as Miss Czech Republic 1999. “Am I to
leave everything else behind me now?”
wondered the ecological activist as
she had her picture taken for the
cover of the Czech edition of Cosmopolitan magazine. Not at all, theneditor-in-chief Anastazie Kudrnová told
her: “Now you have a perfect chance to
promote everything you think is right!”
Within two weeks Helena Houdková
was driving a Cosmopolitan reporter
through the snow and mud of southern
Bohemia to a shelter for injured birds
and their beauty and poise (Nepal).
Society
“Beauty is as beauty does.”
English saying
of prey, hoping to call attention to the
lack of regulations that would prevent
these birds from being harmed by electrical power lines.
This blonde rebel is probably the only
model in the world to start out working
for charity, only later turning to modelling as a way to make a living. “I’ve been working in the social sphere since
the age of sixteen. I learned sign language and visited children’s hospitals,”
says the young anthropologist, whose
work with physically and socially handicapped children led to her starting the
Sunflower Foundation, charged with
helping institutionalized children in the
Czech Republic find lost confidence,
self-respect and faith in themselves. For
several years she served as a children’s
camp counsellor, until the Sunflower
name began to resonate. Along with
her successful work with children, inter-
national demand for Helena as a model
also grew. More and more she found
herself travelling abroad.
She settled in New York, but as her
travel itinerary grew, so did her awareness of the many places where intervention on the behalf of children is
needed. For two years she travelled
around the world taking pictures. It
Helena Houdová in advertising campaigns for Cherokee, Tesco
didn’t take long for her to realize that
the key to helping is education. This is
why the goal of the non-profit organization Sunflower Children is to provide
children with access to education, supported by health care and nutritional
assistance. It begins by building schools
in a selected area. Then programmes
for the children’s free time are developed, including afternoon and weekend
activities. Sunflower has expanded its
assistance to ten countries: besides the
Czech Republic, the foundation works
in Cuba, Nicaragua, Peru and Brazil.
It has undertaken other activities in
Kenya, Guinea, Nepal, India and Cambodia. At the moment it is developing
projects for helping children in Haiti,
Romania and Sri Lanka. In Cambodia,
Helena sponsors a young girl who is
suffering from AIDS. In the Czech Republic, Sunflower Children supports
17
Petra with one of her “rivals” – the supermodel Tereza Maxová
education and treatment for orphans
afflicted with the disease. The average
budget for Helen’s project comes to
US$30,000 a year, which she helps to
raise by selling her photographs or appearing at benefit fashion shows. Interested
in participating? You can find out how at
www.sunflowerchildren.org, or by writing to [email protected].
Republic, a land with only ten million
citizens (roughly the population of
London), sent an enormous amount of
money that made up 20 percent of the
entire amount furnished by all the
countries of the world together. And the
story of Petra Nûmcová is part of that.
S
Petra Nûmcová
A smiling angel
A long-haired young woman clings
to the branches of a palm tree. The
cold, pounding water tries to tear her
away. She has no idea how long she
can hang on, no idea exactly what has
happened. She is aware of a sharp
pain in her pelvis. She tries to keep her
legs from being caught in the floating
debris, and prays, trying to stay calm.
Through it all she feels a dull sorrow:
just moments earlier she was walking
along the beach with her boyfriend.
They returned to the bungalow five minutes before the killer wave hit, parting
them forever.
On December 26, 2004 the world
was informed of a disastrous tsunami
that struck the coastlines of Asia.
Czechs would soon learn that worldfamous model Petra Nûmcová was
among the survivors, but was very se-
18
riously injured. Soon the nation was
told that hundreds of its citizens had
been vacationing in the affected areas.
Unfortunately, fears that some had
perished were soon confirmed.
Czechs soon realized that a catastrophe had occurred in far off Asia that
would have a direct affect on their
lives. The story of Petra Nûmcová drew
attention to conditions in Thailand,
bringing on a giant, healing wave of
support for the afflicted country. Within a few weeks the people of the Czech
he lay in the local hospital in
Hai Yai with a broken hip; morphine
numbed the pain. Her lips were painfully swollen. The death of her friend,
British photographer Simon Atlee,
would not be officially confirmed until
March. The reporters were already descending on Phuket: the troubles of
other people raise newspaper circulation. And when one of the victims of
the tragedy is a famous and beautiful
young woman who loses her love in the
disaster and lies injured among crowds
of orphaned children, that’s a story. The
paparazzi went wild for a picture of a
bruised Petra Nûmcová in a hospital
bed. Finally she agreed to an offer by
the magazine US Weekly, donating the
money to the tens of thousands of
children who had lost their parents in
the ordeal. The photographer expected
tears, but instead found a serene smile
on the face of Petra Nûmcová. Later
she explained to journalists: “A mother
talks to her daughter about how people
Cover of the book in which Petra describes her greatest challenges in life
Petra with Thai children
react differently to tragedy. Think about
a carrot, an egg and some coffee, she
says. Put these three things together
in hot water, and what happens? The
carrot was hard, but now it’s soft. The
soft egg hardens. But the coffee? In the
hot water, that is, in the most trying
times, it gives us its aroma and taste.
It becomes something better.” This is
exactly how Petra behaved. As soon as
she had recovered, she went back to
Thailand to learn what the orphaned
children need the most. Then she founded the Happy Hearts Fund, which now
helps 1200 Thai children. Her foundation is contributing US$130,000 to build
a school in Khao Lak and housing for
eighty children. She raised US$38,000
to provide psychological help for the
afflicted. For twenty orphans who survived the catastrophe on the Indonesian
island of Aceh, she has arranged to cover
US$12,000 in costs for food, schooling,
books, accommodation and transportation. The American magazine Glamour
declared her its Woman of the Year for
2005. She has published a book entitled Love Always, Petra, the proceeds
of which go to charitable activities.
She travels diligently around the world
gathering support for the Happy Hearts
Fund. She’s looking for money. Want
to help? You’ll find the information at
www.give2asia.org/happyheartsfund.
Sabrina Karasová
Petra in a charity campaign for the firm
Rampage
Happy Hearts Fund foundation donated US$130,000 to build a school
for 80 children in Khao Lak
Editor-in-chief, Cosmopolitan magazine
Photos: Martin Bandzak, Cosmopolitan,
Sunflower Foundation (sunflowerchildren.org),
Happy Hearts Fund
A picture by Jan Saudek going under the hammer at a charity auction of paintings
19
20
1
2
3
4
5
6
Art
Czech women have been among
the leading lace makers – alongside
the Italians and Dutch – since the
very beginnings of this remarkable
textile’s history. Czech lace makers
reconfirmed their select status in the
beginning of the twentieth century,
when lace found a new role in Czech
culture.
Ludmila Kybalová
b. 1929)
Art Historian
For centuries, lace has had the
attributes of decorativeness, sweetness and filigreed beauty. It both
pleased and embellished; it was evidence of nobility and celebration.
Jifií Pilka
(b. 1930)
Musicologist and writer
Works by Milãa Eremiá‰ová
(opposite page)
1. Pyramid
2. Scarlet in Blue
3. Great Arch
4. Sydney
5. Gothic Arch
6. Black-grey
1
Centre photo: Madona v kefii
Works by Svûtlana Pavlíãková
(this page)
1, 2, 3, 5. The Elements, flax,
cotton, silk, metallic thread
(dracou, lerex), beads, paper pulp
(4x25x25 cm)
4. Gryphon, wire, sheet metal
(122x150 cm)
6. Garden, metal, flax (122x90 cm)
2
3
5
4
6
21
TINITY
22
SoÀa Hlaváãková:
“My goal is to always have some
kind of goal.”
remote nightclub next to a dock by the
river on the outskirts of Prague.
Along the darkened catwalk strides
one smiling beauty after another, the
spotlight shining on clothes so colourful that a butterfly could hide itself in
their folds. For a while it seems like
the inside of a gaudy Oriental harem;
the next minute you find yourself on
a busy street in a city where the pace
of life is so fast people need a streamlined cut of clothes for zipping around.
Then suddenly the models are inviting
you to a summer resort garden party,
full of sparkling sequins on dresses
with refined slits. Staring in amazement at the multicoloured review on
the stage, you know you’re seeing
something special. Something worldly
that you wouldn’t expect to find in a
oÀa Hlaváãková, who became
the first and thus far only Czech fashion
designer to present a collection at the
prêt-à-porter fashion show in Paris, is
showing a part of that collection here.
This petite young woman dresses
Czech and foreign top models, television moderators, singers, actors and
sports stars. The twenty-eight-yearold designer makes no secret of her
goals, judging the situation this way:
“If I can keep up the same working
pace I am now, I have a real chance to
make it abroad.” Smiling, she continues,
“My goal is to be one of the world’s elite
designers and break into the fashion
markets in Europe, the United States,
Japan and the Arab countries. It’s a
S
SoÀa Hlaváãková, founder and owner
of the Tinity brand
Fashion
“Empathy is important for
dressing. You can’t make beautiful clothes or even dress well and
tastefully if you’re not in tune
with the world around you.”
Natálie Steklová
(b. 1976)
Fashion Designer
big job that has to be approached in
a step-by-step manner. The worldfamous designers of today are mostly
between fifty and sixty years old. So I
have a lot of time yet.”
When you watch her at work, you
realize that in addition to designs,
she is also creating and working with
the atmosphere in the room – flower
arrangements or a mix of music from
different genres and with different
moods at the same time. “This year
I’m working mainly with silk and various
embroideries. I bring out the contrast
between the roughness and smoothness of the materials. There’s no colour
I would avoid.”
H
er fashion collection from the
Paris prêt-à-porter show sold out all
over the world. She also gained two big
customers, a large boutique in Atlanta
and one of the most luxurious fashion
galleries in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,
where her models will be alongside
of those of Karel Lagerfeld and John
Gallian. “My goal is to always have
some kind of goal,” says SoÀa.
As a child she was already designing
and sewing outfits for her dolls. She
was interested in architecture, graphology, sculpture; she studied art history,
drawing and esthetics. In time she
opened her own store, which sold clothes
imported from Italy; sometimes she
exhibited clothes that she designed
herself. It turned out that the clientele
were much more interested in her creations than the Italian outfits, so she
founded the fashion label Tinity and
started designing full-time. She designed
costumes for the Czech versions of
the musicals Grease and Chicago, and
has created company logos for many
Czech and international firms, includ-
S
ing Eurotel, T-Mobile, L’Oreal, Hewlett-Packard, Nestlé, Danone, Smirnoff
and Camel.
In discussing the Czech contribution to design, she says: “The present
situation still requires Czech designers
to rein in their extraordinary inventiveness. There is no good designing
school in existence in our country;
people have to go abroad to learn how
to use the technology. They have to
discover a lot of things for themselves.
Czechs are good at handicrafts: our
locally made beads and pearls are
among the best in the world. But it’s
mainly that we know how to work with
them. Things made by hand are something we can be proud of.”
he continues, “For example, I like
to design outfits for fuller-bodied women
who often want to conceal more, and
I help them discover how to present
their better points and really look good.
My customers become my friends,
which helps me to do my work. Women
in the stores often say to me, ‘It’s
beautiful, but where would I wear it?”
That’s nonsense! In Czechoslovakia
under the old regime it paid to be a
little grey mouse and blend in with the
crowd.” SoÀa Hlaváãková believes:
“My customers are different. They like
to dress well, and there are going to be
more and more of that kind of people
in this country.”
Sabrina Karasová
Editor-in-chief, Cosmopolitan magazine
Photos: www.tinity.cz
23
BLANKA
Blanka Matragi:
“I stand behind every rag.”
If SoÀa Hlaváãková is the rising star
of Czech design, Blanka Matragi is
the fixed star – though she shines from
Lebanon. She first studied to be a glass
cutter and then took up fashion design.
The link between art and fashion is her
trademark theme; a big surprise was her
1999 comeback in the field of glass and
crystal costume jewellery.
B
lanka first became internationally
known within the Socialist bloc in 1978
by winning the design competition for
the 1980 Moscow Olympics collection.
At home, she designed costumes for
television and dressed the Czechoslovak pop stars of the day.
The following year she married a
Lebanese engineer, Makram Matragi,
and a few months later moved to Beirut.
24
She found herself on the road to finding
her dream clientele – customers from
the highest circles of the Arab world. At
first she created designs for evening
wear for a private Lebanese firm, but in
1982 she opened her salon Blanka Haute
Couture on Beirut’s main boulevard,
Hamra Street. She won a worldwide
competition for her design of police
uniforms for Abu Dhabi in the United
Arab Emirates. She not only dresses the
wives, sisters and daughters of kings,
emirs, sheiks and magnates in the region
of the Persian Gulf, but European high
society as well. Her major focus remains
evening gowns, as well as shower and
wedding ensembles.
“Everybody wants something extraordinary; everyone wants to be original
in themselves in order to satisfy their
own vanity. And that’s what fashion is
all about ... Today’s fashion is about a
feeling of lightness, the butterfly women
reveal as much as they can of their body.
That’s why women are exercising and
working hard – even all my princesses
have their own private trainers and put
Blanka Matragi, the leading Czech fashion designer and founder of Blanka Haute Couture, has lived for many years in Lebanon.
a lot of effort into really looking good.
What role is played by the customs of
the Middle East? If they don’t want
their legs to be seen, we sheathe them
completely, but the décolletage and
the arms are bared today, with shawls
worn over them, made of, say, tulle
or chiffon. And even in those palaces,
they wear very sexy and very feminine
clothes.”
Blanka’s salon is unique not only for
the delicate textile that it produces: it’s
also remarkable for the ethnic composition of the team of women who work for
her. In 2001 a reporter from Czech Radio
found women from Lebanon, Armenia,
Turkey, the Czech Republic, the Philippines and one from the Seychelles.
They are Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox
Christians, Sunni and Shiite Muslims –
a total of fifty women in two studios
who bring Blanka’s highly individualistic concepts into reality. Every customer
here has her own tailor’s mannequin that
is an exact reproduction of the client’s
figure; the mannequin is even altered
as people gain or lose weight. “My creed
is that I stand behind every article of
clothing,” says Matragi.
Blanka Matragi enjoyed a symbolic
triumph in 2002 with an exclusive
fashion show in Prague, and the presentation of her new collection for the
twentieth anniversary of her Beirut salon.
of the individual mythology of women.
She is the master of silence in vogue.
The vogue of Blanka Matragi we cannot
interpret only as a fashion. She creates
artwork.” In 2003, Blanka Matragi was
recognized by a proclamation of the
Czech Republic’s Senate and Ministry
of Foreign Affairs as an “Important
Czech Woman in the World”.
A presentation of sixty of her exclusive
evening gown designs along with an
exhibit of past and current designs
created for various royal families will
be held in September of this year at
the Municipal House in Prague. These
events will be a part of the celebration
of Blanka Matragi’s twenty-five years
in the profession.
The editors
Photos: Robert Vano, Via Perfecta Agency,
www.tinity.cz, www.blanka.com
In the spring of that year, she was given
the European Art Prize, and that summer
this was followed by two more: the Salvador Dali International Prize and the
Franti‰ek Kupka 2002 award from the
Union of Czech Graphic Artists for
“graphic and pictorial vision in clothing
design.” When Professor Miroslav Klivar
of World Distributed University in Brussels
gave her the European Art Award, he
described her contribution to design in
this way: “Blanka Matragi is a master
Who are the next leading Czech designers?
Alice Abraham
www.aliceabraham.com
Monika Drápalová
www.modra-fashion.cz
Helena Fejková
www.helenafejkova.cz
Daniela Flej‰arová and Eva Janou‰ková
www.edaniely.cz
Tatiana Kovafiíková
www.tatiana.cz
Klára Nademl˘nská
www.klaranademlynska.cz
Ivana Novotná
www.ivn.cz
Libûna Rochová
www.studio-lr.com
25
The Muses of Photogenie
The oldest portrait of a woman
shown here dates from the early twentieth century. It was in 1903 that Franti‰ka Plamínková helped found the
Czech Women’s Club, the mission of
which was the cultivation and enlightenment of society. The picture by noted traveller and photographer Franti‰ek Krátk˘ is one of significance.
For a while Krátk˘ bore the torch of
idealization, seeing that his mission
was to glorify the model in the spirit
of the times. In the thirty years that
I have been scouring the used book
stores for photographic portraits, I had
never seen a photographic depiction
of a halo that was not circular but rectilinear – until last year. It should be
understood that I have seen innumerable circles and ovals engraved on
photographs as haloes.
The nine Muses have been passed
down to us from the ancient Greeks.
The depiction of their attributes has
evolved through history to the point
where we can barely recognize them.
Figuratively this foreshadows the
democratization of the portrait,
its mass distribution and trivialization, most of which took place in the
twentieth century.
T
he authors of the photos printed here are exclusively men. They
are an illustration of how the stronger
sex views humanity’s more delicate
half. From old-fashioned souvenir
photographs the range of genres expands to encompass the dreams that
contemporary artists harbour and
communicate about women.
2
5
26
1
3
4
6
7
8
The lady in the picture was probably
Bohumila Bloudilová, to whom Franti‰ek Krátk˘ taught photography in
Kolín. In the spring of 1906, she opened her own studio in that same town.
Because Kolín is so much smaller
than Prague, her efforts to compete
in what was then, in the tradition of
nineteenth-century morality, a man’s
profession, are all the more admirable.
In the 1920s the women’s liberation
movement was burgeoning. European
men returned from the Great War to
a different world. The clear growth
in women’s self-awareness required
some adjustments. Nor could it be
ignored in photography. Chairwoman
of the Czechoslovak Red Cross Alice
Masaryková was also called on occa-
10
9
sion to fill the role of First Lady. Her
father TomበGarrigue Masaryk was
the first President of an independent
Czechoslovakia, a democracy built
on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. When he visited the legendary
photographer Franti‰ek Drtikol, it was
Alice who accompanied him.
Drtikol is known today for his nudes,
but his archives contained many times
more portraits. They seem to exude a
civic self-awareness. A new nation had
been founded and now the inalienable
dignity of man and woman was not
just for the elites, who had cultivated
the portrait for centuries. With inexpensive photography available to the
masses, now even a typical day labourer
could be immortalized. The earlier decorativeness fell by the wayside: a realistic
likeness was now sufficient to convey
human dignity.
Though Alice Masaryková was a
figure close to the ruling circles, here
she poses unpretentiously. Her portrait
has not yet assumed the Art Deco mood,
but is no longer Art Noveau. With
Euro-American emancipation, women
are discarding their prudish attire.
Skirts are shortened by one-third, and
27
more and more women
are allowing themselves
to be seen in natty, closefitting swimwear. More
and more, women feel
comfortable in front of
the camera.
The illustration of Vítûzslav Nezval’s poetry
by Karel Tiege crosses
the line into the modern
conception of women.
According to this interpretation, a picture in the
true service of the international avant-garde must
be socially committed
and critically decipherable. The idealistic depiction of women (often in
the genre of the nude)
was to be confronted
with their actual status in
society during the era of
global economic crisis in
the 1930s. The presentation of this conflict remains on the photographer’s agenda to this day.
In the end it would be
up to the female artist to
seize portraiture for her-
12
28
self. But that is a different chapter in the democratization of art.
Only the one anonymous photo may have
been taken by a woman.
This is, however, quite unlikely: if it was the case,
it would be a surprising
exception. It would mean
that the male ideal of
women was a concept
that could be put forward
by women themselves.
But in this exhibit we
follow women through
the male photographer’s
various angles of motivation. In any case, it is obvious that women remain
a welcome source of inspiration, one that can give
the photographer’s vision
a surprising set of wings.
To a certain extent it is
often obscure whether a
picture was staged for the
photographer or came his
way by happenstance and
serendipity. The arrangement from the studio of
the contemporary photo-
11
13
14
Men themselves have other things in
mind. To be happy in life they don’t
need a woman out of a picture!
grapher Ivan Pinkava is extremely
old-fashioned in stylization. But the
vignette of war by Tibor Honty almost
gives the impression of having been
composed as well: it would be hard to
stage a more pathos-inducing scene
with an entire film studio and crew!
Josef Moucha
Fotograf magazine
P
avel Mára casts art historian Anna
Fárová in an extraordinary dual role.
In one stroke he pays double tribute
to her legacy as a multi-faceted artist
on the one hand and as a specialist in
photography on the other. Her older
colleagues on the academic art scene
regarded the medium as unworthy.
But her younger colleagues instead
chose to follow her example.
Our review can hardly fail to mention
seventy-one-year-old Jan Saudek, one
of the most famous Czech photographers ever. With his bold sense for
dramatic contradiction he declares:
“My photos are purely decorative, and
people should hang them on their
walls. I want them to be enjoyed.
After all, they speak of eternal human
problems”. The author creates, in his
own words, “things that are complete
15
nonsense, but are believable”. As an
example he says: “No girl is going to
hold her blouse in her teeth to reveal
her breasts. I did it, and it works.”
Careful readers will surely have
noticed that no attention has been given
here to the kind of beauty that submits
itself through various competitions to
a collective-minded band of judges.
All these queens of the catwalk somehow look alike ... poster-quality, you
might say ... but nothing like the Muses.
The Changing Image of Women in Photography
– captions
1. Franti‰ek Kratk˘ (Kolín): unititled
(early twentieth century)
2. Franti‰ek Drtikol: Alice Masarykova, 1919
(Collections of the Museum
of Decorative Arts, Prague)
3. Karel Teige, illustration for Abeceda,
a collection of poems by Vítûzslav Nezval, 1926
4. Eva Fuka, Straw Head, 1958
5. Jan Lukas, Refugees from the Sudetenland following
the Munich Agreement, early October 1938
(Property of the author)
6. Miroslav Hák, Mask, 1938 (Collections of the
Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague)
7. MiloÀ Novotn˘, Model, 1964 (Collections of the
Moravian Gallery, Brno)
8. Vilém Reichmann, from the cycle Magic:
Sexbomb, 1964
(Collections of the Moravian Gallery, Brno)
9. Alexander Hammid, Maya, around 1943
(Collections of the PPF Group)
10. Jaromír Funke, Sisters, 1942 (Collections of the
Moravian Gallery, Brno)
11. Tibor Honty, Killed in the war’s last seconds.
Funeral of Colonel Georgij Sacharov in front
of the Rudolphinum, Prague, 10 May 1945
(Collections of the Moravian Gallery, Brno)
12. Ivan Pinkava, Salome, 1996 (Property of the author)
13. Tono Stano, Sense, 1992 (Property of the author)
14. Bohdan Holomíãek, Trutnov, 1967
(Collections of the PPF Group)
15. Jan Saudek, Marie no. 142, 1972
(Property of the author)
29
Eva Fuka
It’s my world...
“I haven’t been influenced by
anybody, and it never occurred to me
to try out any new techniques. I just
created my own world. Sometimes
the results may have been a bit clumsy, but it was my world, and no one
could enter but me. I never really
cared about any international trends
– I didn’t even know about them, and
didn’t miss them, either.”
Photographer Eva Fuka
in her biography Fragments of a
Life: A Photographer’s Memoir.
Eva at an exhibition opening in the office of J. Funke
in Brno. Photo: Emanuel Frynta
L
ast year’s made-for-television
film Vracím do zemû labryntu (Return
to the Land of the Labyrinth) was director Ale‰ Kisil’s tribute to the life
and work of Eva and Vladimír Fuka.
The pair left Prague and settled across
the ocean, then back to the old continent, then from Germany back to New
York. Today Eva Fuka (born in 1927)
30
Time Stood Still, 1957
lives in Prague. Art has become a
way for her to keep impressions
fresh and alive, a way of maintaining
direction.
She was introduced to photography
at an early age by her father Franti‰ek
Pode‰va, an academic, painter, and
editor-in-chief of the journals Rozkvût
and Salon. His wife Marie was an
author and a translator who spoke
several foreign languages. Perhaps it
was Eva Fuka’s inherited verbal
talent that inspired her to give voice
to her memories. All quotations used
in this article are taken from her autobiography Fragments of a Life.
The Pode‰va sisters spent their preschool years living in a large, welllighted flat with a glass ceiling in a
building on the main street in the Vinohrady district, one of Prague’s better
quarters. The flat served as a studio
and as a meeting place for artists,
photographers and literati, including
frequent visitors from abroad: “There
was an orange rug with a white elephant in the middle covering the hall’s
parquet floor – a gift from a friend in
Final Journey, 1953
Portrait
China – that never ceased to fascinate
me,” recalls Eva Fuka.
Eva Fuka has been photographing
sculptures and pictures in an attic
studio of New York’s Metropolitan
Museum since the 1960s, a space with
the same nourishing light as the light
that poured down on her childhood
through the glass ceiling.
Pork Fat, 1953
began to disappear from our playground and from school benches.”
Shadow, 1952
Retracing her steps
blackest night, where people were
bumping into one another in the dark.
As the days went by, yellow stars began to appear on people’s clothes, and
I, in desperate protest, always rode in
the rear tram cars, because Jews were
not allowed in the front cars. Friends
“My photographic experiments at
the age of twelve were not too bad,”
reckons the author of two monographs
and many exhibitions and catalogues.
“I became more and more interested
in photography; I made several passable pictures, and started my ‘studies’
at the studio of Miro Bernat, and at
the School of Graphics.” Even during
the war, young novices in the art of
photography were taught there by
Josef Ehm and Jaromír Funke, who
had been inspired by Surrealism. A
like-minded photographer and future
film director, Miro Bernat, assigned
selected literature to his student for
her to study and had her recite poetry.
The Second World War ended for
Eva with the beginning of the Prague
Uprising on 5 May 1945: “On that
day I celebrated my birthday: I was
eighteen years old. I’ll never forget
the ninth of May, when the tanks finally appeared on the horizon to liberate Prague from the last clutches of
the Germans. At five in the morning
we were awakened by the growl of
H
er parents brought up the girls
with Spartan discipline. Her father
probably missed having a boy, so he
dressed the girls in pants, had their
hair cut short and taught them to box.
“A regular visitor would often frighten
us, saying that war was coming and if
we misbehaved we could be sent to a
concentration camp. In my childhood
imagination this abstract term filled
me with unimaginable horror. I did
not like that man.”
Then came a raw and cold March
1939 and German soldiers occupied
Czechoslovakia. “We all cried over
our betrayal by our allies. Our parents hung a poem by Svatopluk âech
on the wall: ‘Believe no one in this
wide world we haven’t a single friend
there ...’ Prague was darkened; the
trams shone like blue fireflies in the
31
Autumn Leaves, 1953
Just Three, 1962
motors. Soon, faint hopes that we
would be seeing American tanks disappeared: ‘This means the end’, said
my dad quietly, standing on the balcony
watching the lumbering giants go by,
their red banners fluttering.”
I
n the early summer of 1945,
this graduate of a graphics secondary
school and trained photographer applied to the Academy of Fine Arts in
Prague. All Czech universities had been
closed for several years and there was
a rush to sign up for newly-opened
classes; even so, she was accepted.
There she met a classmate who
would become her life-long partner:
Vladimír Fuka (1926-1977). Their
youthful beginnings were interrupted
by the Communist takeover in February 1948, which was followed by
a regime of parades, lines in front of
empty shops and the kitsch of Socialist Realism.
In the 1950s Eva Fuka explored
Prague with a camera around her neck
and her daughter Ivana on her back.
At that time she began to build the
foundation of her life’s work. She was
cut off from the outside world by an
impermeable wall of censorship: the
borders were vigilantly monitored
by the police; group activities were
32
Silver Necklace, 1962
illegal. Just like during the occupation, one could only dream of the
streets full of lights, and cafés where
people could talk freely among themselves. The new dictatorial regime
ushered in decades of arms races and
economic absurdity. Shadows lurked
behind closed-up storefronts of businesses that had been nationalized and
then abandoned. The cinema and the
theatre were overrun with propaganda. Prague Castle loomed forbiddingly over the Vltava, while Prague’s
narrow streets and romantic houses
crumbled from a lack of maintenance.
Façades were streaked with leaking
water from rusty gutters. While the
graphic and impromptu artist Vladimír Boudník exploited the cracks
in the walls right there on the houses,
Eva Fuka altered the contours of
reality in her photographs. She usually worked with a simple idea – for
example, reversing the negative when
developing it.
T
he Fukas were artists who drew
on the subject of life in society. Once
a week they and their young friends
shared with one another the contents
of their “diaries”. During the difficult
years of Stalinism they issued a private magazine that became the intelSelf-portrait, 1962
In the Woods, 1958
Jifií Koláfi, 1954
lectual foundation for their
further work. The Cold War
era produced a shift in the
lyrical imagination towards
irony, towards absurdity:
“We formed an inseparable
group, and we saw each
other pretty much every day.
We were all poor; none of
us produced anything useful
to the regime. Our common
plight in those years bound
us tightly together. Of course
we didn’t dare sit around
in a coffee shop: the spooks
were always right behind us;
sometimes they hung around
under our windows. During
the political trials there was
a ban on group meetings,
so we went to see friends
one at a time.”
To be continued
After thirty-five years
of exile Eva Fuka returned
to her native Prague. The
apartment of this scholarly,
classically-educated artist is
more than tastefully furnished; it is an environment in
the artistic sense. Of course
the spirit of Vladimír Fuka
is ever-present in his paintings, drawings and graphics.
Eva Fuka divides her time
between Prague and trips to
America and Paris, where
her grandson lives and where
her daughter runs a successful graphics studio.
E
T
he atmosphere of suspicion and a targeted campaign against intellectuals
cost artist Jifií Koláfi nine months
in pre-trial detention. He was jailed
just before Christmas, 1952. “Luckily
the trial was interrupted by Stalin’s
death. I remember it well: I used to
walk with the baby carriage beneath
the window, and Vladimír stuck his
Hotel, 1952
head out to tell me of Stalin’s death.
In the streets the loudspeakers
were playing funeral music but our
hearts rejoiced.”
va Fuka is preparing a retrospective for her
eightieth birthday in a
year’s time. This look back
on her life’s work will require a thorough review
of the surviving archives of negatives, many of which have never
been developed.
Josef Moucha
Fotograf magazine
33
Two Queens of
Czech Lace
Milãa Eremiá‰ová (b. 1938)
Milãa Eremiá‰ová was born in Prague
and following her secondary school
studies, she attended the Academy of
Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague,
where she studied lace and embroidery.
She was a teacher at an arts and crafts
institute and in 1990 she began teaching
at the private Master School of Artistic
Design in Prague. Currently she is
teaching both at home and abroad. Since
she completed her studies, she has been
an active artist and she first exhibited her
works in Sweden in 1967 her first solo
domestic exhibition was in 1973.
In his essay “The Secret Touch in the
Lace of Milãa Eremiá‰ová”, Jifií Pilka
writes: “Milãa Eremiá‰ová found her
world in the fragility of all types of thread.
Her lace creations leave the two-dimensional world behind, moving into a threedimensional space that combines a wooden
torso with a tree-like structure. The spiritual
world is a powerful source of inspiration
in her work, manifesting itself in pietas,
crucifixes, and innumerable variations
of representations of the Virgin Mary and
Jesus. What is remarkable for work
thus inspired is a dance-like quality. The
Virgin Mary is not represented in traditional brave figurations, but joy glows
from within her, she is flowing, in motion.
Emphasis is placed on feeling rather than
description or naturalism.
We can find natural motifs in a wide
range of the artist’s works; the world of
music (Janáãek, MartinÛ, Stravinsky) is
a frequent source of inspiration. Nature
is often an independent element in many
of her creations because Milãa Eremiá‰ová feels very close to it. Suggestive representations of the sea in a wide range
of variations are often dominant; the
artist joyfully and repeatedly sets out on
a journey to that ancient element that is
the source of all life on this planet.
Eremiá‰ová’s monumental works de-
34
signed for large architectural spaces
are less well known because they are so
difficult to display.
The artistic world of Milãa Eremiá‰ová has many of the characteristics of
the Czech artistic tradition: to contain a
spiritual message, to unify horizons, to
tune nature and people, past and present,
the friability of tragedy with the desire
for life’s beauty, into a personal and
perspective creative gesture. Women are
often blessed with the gifts of wisdom
and harmony. Milãa Eremiá‰ová is able
to transform these into the strong language of artistic expression.
Svûtlana Pavlíãková (b. 1954)
Svûtlana Pavlíãková was born in the
eastern Bohemian city of Hradec Králové. She studied bobbin lace making at
the Artistic Production Institute in Vamberk. She then worked there as a lace
maker and designer for a lace making
artistic cooperative. Since 1992, she has
devoted her energies to both decorative
and non-decorative arts. She has exhibited her works since 1978 and currently
they may be found in the collections
of the Vamberk Lace Museum, the Prachatice Lace Museum and the Museum
of Jewish Culture in Prague.
She says about herself: “Something
fundamental draws me towards textiles.
It was fate that introduced me to bobbin
lace making and allowed me to develop
within it. This limitation is not a limitation. Embracing and breaking the borders of this technique’s possibilities is
almost impossible for one person. One
deals with many other textile and nontextile techniques that either are derived
from lace making or that naturally assimilate with it. The boundlessness of the
technical possibilities is a challenge, an
adventure and a space for personal expression. I am searching for both the
philosopher’s stone and myself in the innumerable branches of this living tree.
Fashion show supports the
·koda Roomster
Recently, models and dancers dressed in silver gowns by the Czech fashion designer Hana Havelková enticed
visitors at the automobile show in
Leipzig, Germany to look at the new
·koda Roomster car, which had its
German premiere at this show.
The designer noted “A team of top
Czech models and professional dancers try to get the attention of the visitors, with more than thirty models appearing in a single performance. This
year we had the great fortune to work
with Michal ·típa, a soloist for the
National Theatre Ballet in Prague. In
addition to a traditional fashion show
presentation, the models adjust the
steering wheel, adjust the seats and
load a mountain bike into the car,
all with grace and a smile. Havelková
adds, “I designed the clothes to go
with the design of the new car.”
Photo: Max Tsiu
Headquarters for
EU Presidency
Our country is continuing in its preparations for the 2009, when the Czech
Republic should host the presidency of
the Council of the European Union. Jan
Kohout, the Czech Republic’s ambassador to the European Union, has already
signed a lease for four floors with offices
for 120 people in a building next to the
seat of the Czech Republic’s Permanent
Representation to the EU. This complex
of buildings is located not far from the
seat of the European Parliament.
The Czech Republic will hold the rotating presidency from January to June
2009. The costs associated with the presidency that must be covered will be approximately 2 billion crowns.
Mosaic
Trends 2007
A show of works by the fashion designer Helena Fejková’s work entitled
“Trends 2007” was organized by the
Czech Centre in Paris and the Lucerna
Prague Fashion Gallery, together with
the National Theatre Ballet.
The fashion show was held on 21
April at the newly-opened arrival terminal
of the Eurolines Bus Company, which
is located in La Défense – the most
modern district in Paris. Eurolines set
up some four hundred seats around
the twenty-five-metre long catwalk,
which was the stage for a dance creation choreographed by Jan Kodet and
directed by Lenka Vinická.
This shows premier had been held
earlier on 18 April at the Czernin Palace, the seat of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in Prague. Among the guest was
the Foreign Minister, Cyril Svoboda.
Money raised from the sale of tickets
was donated to the People in Need
Foundation for orphan-focused projects
in Namibia. This fashion show, in cooperation with the Czech House, should
also be held in Moscow in May.
Kurková wins
award
At the age of only 22, the top Czech
fashion model Karolina Kurková has
found herself in the company of women
such as the former American First Lady,
Hillary Clinton and Jordan’s Queen Rania. In New York City, the non-profit
organization Women Together recognized Kurková for her contributions to the
struggle for women’s rights. This prestigious award was presented this year
to ten women who are helping women
in the developing world. Others to be
honoured were the Hollywood star
Angeina Jolie and the Columbian pop
singer Sharika, who heads the children’s
aid foundation Barefoot.
In receiving the award, Kurková said,
“People have to help each other, without
regard for skin colour, nationality or religion. Mutual toleration is incredibly
important. I think that they chose Sharika and me, so that we can help to
spread information about the needs of
women to the younger generation.”
Photo: Mango
Toronto, Canada. In addition to their own
literary works, the duo of ·kvoreck˘ and
Salivarová focused on the publication of
Czech literature for more than two decades
during their Canadian exile. Beginning in
1969, their publishing house Sixty-Eight
Publishers issued more than 220 literary
and historical works banned by Communist Czechoslovakia.
During the presentation of the award,
the eighty-one-year old ·kvoreck˘ noted
that the good name of the Czech Republic
in Canada has primarily been spread by
local Czech businesspeople.
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35
Vítûzslava Kaprálová
An Exceptional Composer
She was only twenty-two and yet she
had only a few short years to live. She
had just boarded the train to Paris, having
received a scholarship to a local music
school. She departed in 1937 as a promising composer and original conductor.
The composer Bohuslav MartinÛ, who
by this time was already very famous
and had been living primarily in France
since 1923, had convinced her to apply
for the scholarship. MartinÛ had met
Vítûzslava Kaprálová during one of his
trips to Boehmia. She caught his eye,
both as a student composer and most
certainly as a woman. Once in Paris,
she found support in MartinÛ – they
played together and he advised her on
her compositions. MartinÛ – who was
a quarter of a century her senior – fell
in love. The student and ward was transformed into a friend and lover.
They all fall for her
Jifií Mucha, son of the painter Alfons
Mucha and one of the other men whose
36
lives were impacted by Vítûzslava
Kaprálová in Paris, wrote in his book
Podivné lásky (Strange Loves): “It was
no surprise that MartinÛ’s relationship
with her changed. Everyone fell in love
with her quite readily, but for MartinÛ
there were even more reasons. She was
Czech, she loved the (Bohemian-Moravian) Highlands, his native region,
and as a composer she was like his soul
mate. It would have been enough to add
his experience to her miraculous talent
and he would not only have created a
great artist but a sort of continuation of
his own being. MartinÛ, who had lived
for many years with the kind but wholly
disinterested Charlotta – a good, motherly housekeeper but no source of inspiration, had no children and Vitka (as she
was known to friends) awoke within him
both a father’s pride and an inspired
love for an ideal being. This is why he
initially was afraid to caress her other
than through words, looks and thoughts.
MartinÛ was all to conscious of how
little, aside from his artistic talents,
he had to offer a girl so much younger
than himself, someone who appeared
to him as an inconstant, mercurial pixie.
He would have given her everything.
But there was one thing he couldn’t and
it was the most important.” Just who
was this “mercurial pixie”?
Since 2001, the Venus Quartet Prague has been known as the Kapralova Quartet (with the permission of Mr Josef Kaprál and in association
with the Kapralova Society in Canada)
Personality
Vítûzslava Kaprálová in a drawing by Rudolf Kundera
“All we can do is look for the
good with open eyes and steel
ourselves against the evil, be
grateful for the beauty that surrounds us and for the pain.”
Vítûzslava Kaprálová
(1915-1940), Composer
(from a letter to her mother)
She came from Brno, her father was
a recognized composer and was the director of a music school; her mother was
a singer, meaning that her talents were
inherited. Her parents set about try to
develop these talents. It is quite possible
that they saw in her a child prodigy. They
encouraged her piano playing, when
she started to compose, they didn’t try
to stop her. Nor did they when she wanted
to leave Brno for Prague and then for
Paris. From a very young age she was
small and fragile and yet at the same
time stubborn and independent.
A very talented girl
S
he was able to read without difficulty at the age of five and she spent
many long hours at her father’s music
school learning to read music and playing four-handed on the piano with him.
She composed her first longer work
at the age of nine. This was also the
time when she first became seriously
ill and was sent to the tuberculosis
sanatorium in Star˘ Smrkovec. From
that time, she constantly had an elevated temperature a signal that something
in her body was not well.
After completing primary school, Kaprálová chose to study at a conservatory,
but she unexpectedly chose the combination composing and conducting. At the
time it was normal that if a woman wanted to make a living in music, she could
either be a teacher in a music school or
a répétiteur in opera or operetta. As her
father had a good knowledge of the professional possibilities in the field, he tried
to talk her out of it. But – as has already
been said – she was a stubborn young
girl. She was accepted to study at the Brno
Conservatory, where she developed her
interest in composing to the full. She
completed her studies in 1935 with a piano
concerto that she herself also conducted.
Music critics began to write about a girl
with an exceptional musical talent. But
Vítûzslava Kaprálová wanted more – she
wanted to attend the composing master
school in Prague, where the composer
Vítûzslav Novák taught. She moved to
Prague and discovered a new cultural environment: concerts, exhibitions, theatres.
Here for the first time, she was completely independent and had to watch each
and every crown piece in her purse. She
was sometimes forced to make a choice
that only someone with a similar passion
would be able to understand: buy new
sheet music or perhaps something to eat?
However, she would write home things
like: “I’ve settled in and it’s pretty good
here. I don’t even have to use the heat because the kitchen is in the next room and
they always let some of the heat into my
room. My piano playing is very good and
all in all it’s less expensive than last year.
My breakfast is cacao and two large bread
rolls that I spread some butter on. I have
mum’s morning snacks, lunch for about
37
Vítûzslava Kaprálová conducting the Brno Radio Orchestra
six crowns from the lady across the hall. In the evening,
it’s a cup of tea that I make
myself using my iron.”
spring, she began to see Jifií,
son of the painter Alfons Mucha. They quickly became
close friends. In France, Jifií
Mucha took advantage of his
father’s previous acquaintances to organize social events
for Czech refugees and was
in contact with other artists
who had remained outside
Czechoslovakia. They would
meet at the well-known café
Les Deux Magots; another
place where the Czech community would gather was the
Café de Flore. This is also
where figures such as Picasso
or Jean Cocteau were regulars – exclusive company for
a young artist.
In Paris
Kaprálová completed the
master school in 1937 and
applied for a state scholarship to go to Paris, where
MartinÛ was waiting for her.
She was introduced to the
Paris cultural scene and in
one of her letters home she
wrote, “Yesterday I was at a
concert by Triton, where they
played Bach, Honegger, Bartók and someone else, but I
just can remember who. We
then went to meet them (I guess
they always do that here) and
·afránek introduced me to a
lot of people just to mention a few – Honegger, Milhauda, Flor. Schmidt (is that
how it’s spelled?), I can’t remember who
else. Schmidt was very kind to me and
said that it’s quite charming that I’m
composing, I said ‘Of course’ and ‘You’re
just saying that’ and otherwise limited
myself to ‘oui’ and ‘enchantée’.” The letter
is good evidence of her growing selfconfidence, which was of course entirely
justified. The premier of what is today
her most famous composition, the Military Sinfonietta, was held in November
1937. Kaprálová dedicated the piece to
Edvard Bene‰ as the supreme commander of the Czechoslovak military and for
this the president personally thanked her.
The composer was quite proud of herself
and her compositions were now being
played at home and abroad. At Christmas
of that eventful year of 1939, she conducted her Prélude de Noël for French radio.
She received standing ovations at the Contemporary Music Festival in London. Her
Military Sinfonietta opened the festival
to thunderous applause as the audience
called this young conductor back for eight
curtain calls. Bohuslav MartinÛ, who had
accompanied Kaprálová, sent her parents
the following telegram: “Concert went
very well. Vitulka conducted like a champion and it was a great success, will send
newspaper articles, my congratulations
and warmest regards.”
All her men
The clouds of the protectorate were
drawing over Czechoslovakia, but in
France the nightmare of war seemed far
38
A wedding without a
honeymoon
away. Vítûzslava Kaprálová continued to
compose and experienced more romantic
interludes. In March 1938 she wrote her
parents that she had received two offers
of marriage. One of her suitors was a certain Dr Hauner, who she wasn’t really
interested in. The other was from an engineer named Rudolf Kopec. They had
met at a singing club for Czech compatriots. He was much more suitable for her
in terms of age and in contrast with the
tender MartinÛ, was not so demonstratively emotional. In the end, it was politics
that came between them. After Munich,
Kopec treated Bene‰ as a traitor, while
Kaprálová still considered him to be the
president of the country and she took the
occupation of Czechoslovakia quite
hard. She returned home briefly, but
MartinÛ continued to write her from
France and arranged a further scholarship for her. She left Czechoslovakia in
January 1939. She then composed an
elegy dedicated to the memory of Karel
âapek as well as other works. In the
While she would sometimes stay at
Jifií Mucha’s, she was still corresponding with Rudolf Kopec. Bohuslav MartinÛ hopes were also still alive – she
had promised him that they would tour
America together.
Jifií Mucha tried to resolve this strange
situation by offering his hand in marriage
to Vítûzlava. But because he was to become an army officer, he had to leave for
military training in the south of France.
He returned on a brief leave in April
1940, when he married Vitka, as he
called her. Jifií, however, had to return
immediately to his military camp and
he waited there for his wife to arrive.
She kept putting off the journey and
what’s more in one letter, she wrote that
she had been to see a doctor, who had recommended surgery. As a former medic,
this seemed strange to Jifií and so he
once again asked for a leave and went
to see his wife. He found her in hospital.
He then took her south with him, where
she was hospitalized in Montpelier –
hospitalized but not treated. No one seemed to know why she had an elevated temperature, suffered pain and seemed to be
wasting away before their eyes. Eventually the doctors decided to operate, but
they were unable to find anything. It was
said that the tuberculosis had probably
spread throughout her entire body. She
was only twenty-five years old.
Barbora Osvaldová
Instinkt magazine
Photos: ArcoDiva, www.opusmusicum.cz,
Podivné lásky (1988) by Jifií Mucha,
Vítûzslava Kaprálová (1958) by Jifií Macek
Front (l to r): Václav Kaprál, Líba HouÏviãková, Mrs Kaprálová Back: Vítûzslava Kaprálová, Bohuslav MartinÛ