If I looked in State Security archives, it would ruin my life
Stáhnout obrázek
Emil Pejša was born on 25 April 1955 in Teplice. His father Stanislav was a locksmith at the mine and his mother Emilie, née Křížová, worked as a labourer. His grandmother Křížová was a founding member of the Communist Party in Teplice. Emil Pejša grew up in Novosedlice and attended primary school there. In response to the occupation of Czechoslovakia on 21 August 1968, he and his classmates boycotted Russian language classes. From his childhood he liked to draw and later enrolled in an apprenticeship as a carpenter at the Trizon Teplice factory. During the normalisation period he met people around the Radar club and the Vyšehrad restaurant. In 1974 he started a two-year military service in Josefov near Jaroměř. In 1979 he got married and left Trizon and became a carpenter in Agricultural Supply and Purchasing. All his life he devoted himself to carving and painting. Together with Eduard Vack and Pavel Kreml, they founded the art association Terč. They could not exhibit freely and State Security was interested in them. After the Velvet Revolution, Emil Pejša and his family moved to Rakovník, where he established his own woodworking shop. He was living in Rakovník at the time of recording in 2023.
