Petr Švestka

“I knew there would be a problem, they arrested a friend. So I hid everything, took away my typewriter and left there only a few things I painted. I arrived from the weekend and after five minutes there was banging on the door. The police arrived. We had double doors, I opened the first one but didn’t want to let them in. I was well trained, from older chartists I knew what our rights were. But I only managed to say, ‘You don’t have the right for this…’ and was handcuffed.”

“When I was in custody in Litoměřice, we read book. There was a lot of illegal literature – from Škvorecký to Polish translations of books I even didn’t know. Great stuff. Well, I guess this was the case of darkness under the lamp. Perhaps they thought there could be nothing wrong in a communist prison and no-one checked. At the time the normal libraries were being destroyed, they had fantastic books in prison libraries.”

“One of my first graphic jobs was an ID card I made for Jindra. Applied art, much hand work. I changed the photo and imitated the stamp by a screwdriver. Me and Jindra we went to Brno to see Carol. I went to collect her. Immediately we realised that we were being followed by the police. It was like in a James Bond film. We boarded a trolley-bus, a cop behind us. In the last moment we got off and he remained inside. We thought we lost them but there were more.”