Mgr. Roman Karpaš

"It was like... I like to remember that school. The children too. There was no problem with them. The problem was with the director. That was, you asked about the politics, so here it intersected. It was a communist, of course established, nomenclature. He didn't care about art education, except that he had some kind of political slogans, message boards and so on everywhere. I agreed, but otherwise it was terrible. I had such an idea that the main thing for those children in terms of teaching should be in school. So, I trained them, really trained them hard. We had some ten minutes tests every lesson, there always had to be some contact, they had to do some activity. It wasn't like they sat in the back in silence for an hour. So, I wasn't interested much in homework. That was the first thing he didn't like about me doing a little homework. The problem arose when there was some - I mean spring holidays - vacation and we had to go to some political training. It was only two days, the rest was to be free. But I thought, 'That's bullshit, I'm not going to any training. I've had enough of school. There's an empty cabinet here, I need to furnish it. 'So, I set up a cabinet there instead of listening to some political bullshit. So, I furnished it, I was satisfied that I finally had it. Because we had to borrow things from the neighboring school for geometry, for example. There was nothing, it was not furnished. Well, he called me once. Or this one. Earlier, Karel Čtveráček from the district cultural center, who founded the Small Exhibition Hall on Šaldovo Square, told me that he would like to end if I could take it after him. Well, I had the empty building in front of me where I wanted to create something. So, I hesitated, I hesitated a lot and I didn't want it that much. But somehow the headmaster got it and said, 'Don't you like it here? Do you want somewhere else?' So, I explained to him that I liked working with children, that I didn't have a problem with that. However, due to the fact that I did not participate in these trainings, I wrote all school reports and from day to day I went to Hrádek nad Nisou. They just really translated me from hour to hour. So, one day I was transferred and the next day I told Karel Čtveráček that I take it."

"I even took such a step in this direction that I created an exhibition in honor of some party anniversary. It was called 'The World of Peace and the World of Violence' and Ivan Bukovský performed there. The Prague artist, who was in disfavor by exhibiting in Terezín together with others, the exhibition was completely torn apart. He had such really rough things, there was something like Hiroshima, Enola Gay, that plane, flying, just such drastic things. But he also had portraits of some friends, quite nice ones. That's what I called the 'World of Peace and the World of Violence', such an almost political undertone. I was very happy that I gave modern art to people who had nothing to say. All they told me: 'But there's not much peace here.' "