Penitent Print

Josef Achrer Biography „…yes, I was born in Vyškov in 1951 Moravia. Well, you know, there is a school accross the street in this small city. Everything was at hand what was very nice. Other things were there for those of us who were cross-country men exactly by the fields. Arts and Crafts Secondary School in Br-no, Academy of Arts and UMPRUM in Prague. Nobody wanted me to paint. I was doing every-thing at UMPRUM except painting. It was unadvisable for moralists from the Academy to allow me to study. Certainly, all of them were looking after my welfare. You cannot put up with it and you keep on painting all stories kept in your head. In the meantime you become an advertising clerk, worker, bridegroom, wood-carver, father, pho-tographer and divorced artist as well. And you keep on painting. You become suspicious to yourself. You think if everybody around you is realy looking for my best intention. So you ke-ep on walking without family with high social ambitions but without a talent to be in the right place at the right time. You keep walking, passing by big pla-ces of showbusiness and shaking your head in disapproval of shallowness of those who used to have a big talent. I think about signs and symbols of personality and character of people, which are recorded deeply in their souls and creat our surroundings and lifelong journey. There are structures and ornaments sometimes hardly legible, they are their own secrets. It happens rarely but it does happen and I can re-ad it from their eyes. It is about stories as complicated as my paintings. My paintings were named as a mosaic of contrasts by someone. Contrasts of illumi-nation and darkness, a paradise and a hell. Yes, it´s true. My work is not about celebrating of life and characterization of ironical and tricky way of watching the world. Attention, please! My statement isn´t crying over spilt milk. It is a story with a happy end. It happened like this and I am happy I can work nowadays. My friend sings: ‚We love what is coming to us and not what was our wish, happiness is an essential soul, a bubble in the spirit level.'“ The Union of Creative Artists in Prague Associations, Groups, Galleries Josef Achrer is a current regularly elected president of the Union of Creative Artists in Prague. It is the art association established in 1898 by artists gathered round National Theatre decoration. J.V. Myslbek, Prof. F. Ženíšek, V. Brožík, V. Hynais, M. Aleš and others were constitutive members.