“A lot of people came for the opening of the exhibition near Mutějovice, but that meant it was… no longer ‘under the radar’ so to speak. The event was officially approved; I think I had to go to Slaný and discuss it with some culture committee. That was quite unpleasant; they were very suspicious. Eventually, they found out it was not exactly to their liking, and those friendly farmers from the United Farming Cooperative in Mutějovice who had lent us a tractor and ladders and gave us accommodation before were tasked with destroying the entire exhibit. So they did, but it didn’t go right. Magdalena Jetelová was one of the artists, and her palisade was the first thing the visitors encountered. It was quite impressive. They wanted to get it over with quicker, so they set an installation by Ivan Kafka on fire in the middle of the hop field. It was this large area inside a cube, it was made of hop stalks, and you walked through it. They lit it on fire, and when the fire really caught on the hop field pillars caught on fire too, and the hop field simply burned to the ground.”
“I was in high school and we were experiencing this first-hand at home. The Dean of the Faculty of Arts was in hospital at the time and dad was at the helm, acting as the Dean. He was in charge of addressing the situation. The Dean was back in office by the time of [Palach’s] burial, but dad was in the office during the thick of it, and he had to address it at the Prague Castle – he was with President Svoboda, and had to speak… He may even have had to speak on television; my brother might know this better than me. At any rate, it was very, very difficult because everybody was anxious if there would be another… if any other student would self-immolate. Dad was trying to address them, to reach out to them and convince them not to do it. His position was terrible, of course. So yes, those were some very difficult times for our family.”
“The clash on returning from Italy was terrible. My parents wouldn’t let me go anywhere because tanks rolled along the river embankment and along Na Moráni, and there was some firing too. My brother was not in Prague; he was at the grandma’s in Jaroměř. We couldn’t get there for a week. When it finally became possible to leave Prague on a train, as we owned no car, it was really tough. We had to walk to the Těšnov station where we boarded a train, and then a firefight burst out between the Rudé právo publishing house and the communist party headquarters by the river. We were all hiding under the seats because they were firing straight across our train.”
Marie Klimešová was born in Prague on 1 March 1952 to the family of theatre historian Professor František Černý and art historian Marie Černá, née Vlachová. The inspiring family environment, the values that her parents shared, and the developments in society during her adolescence essentially influenced her direction in life. At the same time, she was shaped by the Kruh (Ring) girl scout team she joined during the period of the scout movement renewal. The events of August 1968 and Jan Palach’s self-immolation in January 1969 affected her very strongly, not least because her father was temporarily holding the position of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the time of Palach’s act and tried to prevent more sacrifices from happening. Marie Klimešová completed her studies in art and theatre history and, towards the end of her studies, became a member of the Societas incognitorum eruditorum (Society of Unknown Scholars) focused on modern art. This is where she came in contact with Charter 77, which she retyped and disseminated. She saw the ‘normalisation’ period as an era of massive decay. Working in government institutions was not fulfilling for her, and she became active on the unofficial fine art scene. That was when she met her first husband, painter Stanislav Judl who died prematurely in 1989. Following the Velvet Revolution, Marie Klimešová continued to work at the Prague City Gallery, then at the National Gallery and elsewhere. She was involved in curating many exhibitions, of which Ohniska znovuzrození (Focus Points of Rebirth, 1994) and Roky ve dnech (Years in Days, 2010), presenting the Czech art of the 1950s and 1960s, are the ones she values the most. While a doctoral student, she would read series of lectures as an extern in universities in Brno and Olomouc from 2003 on, and has worked at the Department of Art History, Faculty of Arts, Charles university since 2005. She has authored many publications and received major awards. She and her second husband, painter Svatopluk Klimeš, lived in Prague in 2022.
