Jiří David

“That's what we've had in common, me and Standa Diviš, as we met at the Academy, as he came from Kutná Hora and me from the Ostrava region, or Northern Bohemia maybe. So we knew nothing about Prague's underground scene, we had no connection. And people from the underground, as they all grew up in Prague, they didn't want to let anybody else in. It was difficult to reach them, as they were quite distrustful of strangers. Like those people around Topol and the Klamovka pub. And I didn't even try to push my way anywhere, as I was too shy to make friends, and that was the reason, in fact, why we decided, Standa Diviš and me, to create our own underground, as far as fine arts were concerned. That was the reason the Confrontations were born. Our generation called them “the golden youth of Prague”. We weren't the golden youth of Prague. We didn't know people and it was quite difficult to get accepted by anyone. Later, of course, we would make many friends. Standa started making music, 'Krásné nové stroje', then 'Pražská pětka' and the 'Sklep Theatre'. It would all get together, piece by piece, but it was nothing like that in the beginning. That's why the Confrontations were important to us, as we wanted to be a part of the unofficial culture as well, but we wanted to do it our own way. But by no means did we consider ourselves dissidents. We didn't even think about that, being just a couple of young lads.”

“Stanislav Diviš and I, and a few more friends maybe, we came up with this idea to do unofficial exhibitions. As you just couldn't show your work in public at that time. We weren't allowed to show our works outside the premises of our school. It was quite difficult. Then I got this small studio in a basement at Smíchov, there was this one room and a yard. So I thought that was the place where we should try to do this first unofficial exhibition of ours. It was during our second year at the university, in 1983/1984. We decided we would show our works we did at home, not those we had to do at school. At school you had to do figure drawing, not just things you wanted to. And of course, we would be doing our own work, at home, or in this little studio in my case. We invited some people from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design and Stanislav Diviš and I would approach some people from the Academy of Fine Arts who had the courage to put their works on display. As not everyone had the courage. The exhibition was there on Saturday and on Sunday, and it was the first of the famous 'Confrontations'. We called it 'Confrontation' and only later did we learn that there were those 'Confrontations' already in the 1960s, maybe even in the 1940s. So without knowing, we would continue in this tradition of 'Confrontations' from before. And it happened, many interesting people came, like Šimotová and other people we admired. It was on Saturday and on Sunday, and to our surprise, no one would raid the place, there was no secret police, even people at our school didn't know about it.”