"At first I only did relievos because I had learned that from my father. He didn't do spatial things, just small hand-carved relievos. I had lime wood boards from old cupboards and made some relievos from them. Then I got some more lime wood. I didn't know how to use a saw yet, so forest workers cut it for me into planks or whatever I needed. Then one day, road workers brought me two hollow logs. One of the logs was so beautifully rotten and shaped like a standing Gothic Madonna. I thought I'd make a madonna out of it, and I did. That was my first spatial piece. When František saw the rotten log in the yard, he was tempted to go cut it up as firewood, but then I emerged from somewhere and saved it at the last moment."
"It was initially a Czech school with the embassy, but it got closed. The plan was to reopen it but children had to use Russian schools in the meantime. My oldest son was 10 and had to go to a Russian school; my younger son was not of school age; and my daughter was two years younger than him. There were 14 Russian schools with morning and afternoon classes. My son got a Russian school uniform and it had its benefits. The local shops were 'segregated' - some for the natives, some for foreigners, some for the military. The army store was the best-stocked, but you needed a pass, and we didn't get one; or you needed a soldier in the family. What we did is, my son would put on his school uniform, take his back pack, and I wrote down the shopping list. He got his pioneer scarf and went to the 'voyintorg' shop. Nobody would check him. They saw the Russian uniform and it was good - one uniform or another... He brought back home the shopping I needed."
"We were meant to take the state exams in Czech studies first. Before the actual exams, they invited us for some checks. There was a panel of fifteen people. They were the representatives of the Department, the Faculty, the university, 'friendly troops' and a deputy of the city of Olomouc. They asked us all kinds of questions. They had written some reports on us, which we had to read and sign. They wrote something along the lines of, I was an earnest socialist. I read it and it made me angry, and when I was to sign it, I said some of the text bothered me. They said, 'Which exactly?' I read this, that and that. Now, in the corner of my eye, I could see the panel members being uncomfortable hearing it. They were choking on it. Then a Faculty of Arts rep tried to reason with me. He said, 'Well, let's leave that in. Who knows where you're going to go, and who knows what somebody's going to ask you to do. Maybe they'll be looking for these exact words .' Everybody who walked in walked right out, only I was stuck there for at least half an hour. Then when we did the state exams in Czech, I couldn't pass. I took three times. Now I don't know if it was just my stupidity, or if something else was involved..."
Dagmar Koverdynská was born in Jeseník on 22 June 1947 to parents Bořivoj Novák and Emilie Nováková. She spent her childhood in Domašov, which today is a part of the municipality of Bělá pod Pradědem. The family moved to Šumperk in 1958. Completing the local grammar school, she studied art education and Czech at the Faculty of Arts of Palacký University in Olomouc, which is also where she witnessed the events of the Prague Spring, the invasion and the beginnings of normalisation. After graduation, she worked at the Šumperk grammar school. At that time, she met her future husband, geologist Bohdan Koverdynský. His father came from Ukraine, fleeing to Czechoslovakia from the Bolshevik revolution. Her husband joined a geology expedition to Cuba in 1977, and Dagmar Koverdynská with children came to visit him. She spent a total of two years in Cuba, with a short break. Her husband took part in another geology expedition, this time in Mongolia, in the latter 1980. Dagmar Koverdynská wich children lived in Mongolia for two years. Among other things, she taught in a Czech school in Ulaanbaatar. She went back home with her children along the Trans-Siberian Railway. After the fall of communism, she worked as a freelance sculptor. She created distinctive polychrome carvings from lime wood of various natural motifs, human figures, madonnas and other spiritual themes. She has organised 36 solo and some 70 joint exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad. She lived in Nový Malín from 1971 on. Dagmar Koverdynská died on 30 September 2024.
