Jiří Sopko

“I finished school... We had one classmate who I was friends with, he was a Greek Cypriot - Giorgos Kotsonis - I’m still in touch with him. I visited him there three times already. He actually convinced me to go with him to Cyprus at the time. He was returning there after six years. He had a curious history - he’d studied in Chine, he still speaks perfect Chinese. Then he travelled around Europe for about a year, he was in England, even in Moscow, before he came upon this school here - the Academy. So he applied, spent a year learning the language in Hamry. So I went to Cyprus right after finishing school. Back then I received the studio award, and Pelc, who had always treated me with the utmost decency, changed it into a travel scholarship and sorted out all the paperwork with the police or wherever, so they’d let me go. Planes didn’t go there at all back then. So I travelled via Greece, where I spent two weeks. That was the year 66, during the time when the Greek king ended his rule and the military junta came to power. From there I went by boat to Cyprus.”

“When I was in the army I served at the Army Art Studio here in Žižkov [Q: What was that?] The Army Art Studio was... the budget that soldiers received included an enormous sum, I don’t know how big, for art. So the staff army artists - such as Radek Kolář, Schoř, the sculptor Zdrůbecký, Čermáková... they painted those totally regime-conformed pictures. And they bought those for the army themselves. We were there as kind of flunkeys, there were about four us. So for example, we acted as security for exhibitions and things like that.”