"When I was with Stanislav Kolíbal in Turin in 1967, of course we met artists and they were almost all communists, and very radical ones. It was agreed that there would be a reciprocal exhibition. In return for ours, that they would do an exhibition of their Piedmontese Northern Italian art in the Manes. And these communists came with it. And I wished them well. Suddenly they saw what the Bolsheviks were. I had a meeting with them on August 22nd at the Mánes, and there was a canon. And there they said to me: 'They have left. So I really wished that for those communists, that experience."
"The preparation began in 1962. I was already going there every week. I already felt like a domesticated farm animal because I was always scurrying around like a rabbit and I'd pull some stuff out from under the bed and, 'Oh, look. Well, that's interesting, I'd completely forgotten about that.' It was such a wonderful adventure. The exhibition was an incredible success. It was held in early 1963, in January and the rest of February. Bad weather, mud everywhere, the floor in the Mánes had to be cleaned all the time. One hundred and twenty thousand people came in those few weeks. That's absolutely unimaginable today. I'm not saying that everyone was really interested in art, but it was a psychosis. For one thing, it was forbidden fruit, it pulls and tastes. Then, 'I've seen Zrzavý and you must see it too.' It spread like an avalanche, so that in the end a really incredible hundred and twenty thousand people came, and Jan Zrzavý said, 'So you see who is a national artist without the title.' He was right."
"Then came the legendary frosts at the beginning of 1956. They were so terrible, it was thirty below zero. When you came out of the house you had frostbite on your ears right away, unless you had some earmuffs. And our regimental chief, one Colonel Shadek, who made a great career during the normalisation, was in the division. There was an eastern officer in the regiment, Fotul, who went through the whole war in the Soviet Union, and he behaved accordingly. There were still war conditions for him, the Iron Curtain and so on. And this lunatic ordered field exercises in the bitter cold. These guys, poor guys, were lying on the ground like a bone and they had to make a hollow for themselves for the lying shooter. Of course, that was impossible. They were so desperate by the time the canteen, the field kitchen, arrived and poured out hot tea that they poured it into their boots out of desperation and were carried away with third-degree frostbite."
"Action Committee. It actually affected us directly. Milan Kundera studied at our school one grade up. He was always a bit haughty, because he realized what he was, and a communist. When February came, he founded an action committee at the high school. And because he knew about me, we knew about each other, he wanted me to be there. I did, and I thanked him. I mean, nobody at home led me to think politically, but I had an intuition... I can't imagine it any other way. Dad voted for the National Socialists in '61, of course. I felt it was a sham, so I refused."
Jaromír Zemina was born on 30 April 1930 in Přední Ždírnice (today part of Horní Olešnice), near Trutnov. Later he lived with his parents in Znojmo. In the summer of 1938, the Zeminas moved to Brno, where Jaromír studied at the classical grammar school. After February 1948, due to his free-thinking and independent nature, he had his first clashes with the communist regime. After graduating from high school (1949), he studied art history and classical archaeology at the Faculty of Arts in Brno (since 1960 J. E. Purkyně University). From 1953-1954 he was an assistant professor of art history at the same university, but was dismissed for political reasons. In 1954-1956 he completed basic military service. After returning from the war, in 1956 he became the head of the District Museum of Local History in Předklášteří u Tišnova. In 1959 he was admitted to the Institute of Theory and History of Art of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (since then he has lived in Prague). In the 1960s, together with Jiří Šetlík, he worked as a theoretician of the UB 12 group. In 1961-1992 he was employed at the National Gallery in Prague, where he worked for several years as head of the modern art collection. At the beginning of the so-called normalisation, he left this position and was sent to a workplace in Zbraslav, from where he returned to Prague in 1983. Later he headed the collection of foreign modern art. In the 1970s and 1980s he organised unofficial exhibitions in many places in Czechoslovakia, which did not escape the attention of the State Security. At the same time, he was banned from publishing. After 1989, he published a number of book monographs on important personalities of Czech modern art (including Václav Boštík, Jiří John, Adriena Šimotová and Alén Diviš). He has also written several books of fiction and poetry. His teaching activity at the Prague DAMU is also significant. He had several exhibitions of his drawings and photographs. He had a son Ondřej from his marriage to Milena Zeminová (1927-1994). His second wife, Catherine Ébert-Zeminová (1968), formerly Kateřina Křičková, is a novelist, literary historian and university lecturer.
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