My Life with Jiří Altmann „or to Say – Not a Walk Through a Rose Garden“

We met in 1967. There was an alarm light flashing in my head: beware! This guy will either destroy you with his natural energy, or you will fly with him within the clouds. I have always admired him and am still fascinated by the paintings and drawings that are unbelievably easily created underneath his hands. His figurative graphic art and illustrations are never slavishly descriptive. His portraits reflect not only the resemblance, but also the soul’s activity of the person. PhDr. Sylva Petrová writes about him for ODEON in 1980:
„Altmann’s figurative compositions are succinct yet rugged and their expressive exaltation tends to tempt at times to simplify various shapes. This reveals the artist’s romantic relationship to handwork and an apparent inclination to calligraphic arabesque of lines and trails.“
When he asked me to dance with him and I did not fall out of his arms, I fell for his spell. We were flying within the clouds, but at the same time I was also slightly afraid. In 1968, in spring, I signed a contract through Pragoconcert with the Puppet Theatre Hohnsteiner Puppenspieler in West Germany and Jirka signed a contract with Odeon for several woodcarvings for the book of poems by Francois Villon. I left to Germany, also because I got cold feet, on the 1st August 1968.
Under very adventurous travelling circumstances Jiří joined me twenty-nine days later. Being a graduate of AVU (Academy of Fine Arts in Prague), Pragoconcert could arrange a permit visa for him and a job was found for him in the graphic studio of Girardet Publishers. Here he learnt more useful things related to his artwork, apart from others, also how to work with letters.
PhDr. Jana Wittlichová writes about him in this context:
“That is where he clarified in his mind both poles of the graphic art – the free production and illustration, and their mutual interconnection. A fundamental structure of Altmann’s woodcarving, his plastic form motive and intense drama, as well as black and white contrasts is a literary text, but communicated through the visual art in a pure symbolic form and visual metaphor cycles. The history of woodcarving is based on a cyclical expression; Altmann respects this because it allows him to develop a story at several levels and from several visual angles. Such is the cycle of Villon’s poems, of the Alexander Blok’s verses, Boccaccio's Decameron and the balladic number of prints on the theme of the Lidice tragedy.” 
After the invasion of the „allied army“, ODEON had to change its publishing scheme and in the end Villon was not published, even though Jiří had already been paid for the job. In Germany Jiří continued with his work for the publishers and apart from that he was also working on a cycle of independent graphic pages. At the same time he was preparing woodcarvings for the title page of Malé edice poezie (“Small Editions of Poetry”) for ČESKOSLOVENSKÝ SPISOVATEL. His parents who were living in Prague used to take his work to the publisher.
Kurt Viesel, a publisher from the German town Memmingen then asked Jiří to do illustrations for Boccaccio’s Decameron, which he then did create with his common vehemence. I left the puppet theatre after one year. Jiří managed to very “skillfully” crash several cars. One of the involved owners unexpectedly gave me the contact to the Social Pedagogical College and that is where I then taught educational drama under very good conditions for the next tree years. Due to Jiří, I got, by a matter of coincidence, a great job, a wonderful boss, a doctor of Philology, who helped me improve my German.
In August 1969 we went to get married in Prague and in February 1970 our son Jiří was born in Essen.
When Pragokoncert had to summon back all their sheep from the Western countries in 1972, we could either emigrate, or to return home. Our parents were in Prague and we were used to Prague with all its galleries and theatres. We left our fine accommodation and lucrative jobs with a heavy heart and returned back to Prague where we had to start from zero once again. I was employed in the Spejbl and Hurvínek Theatre for two years and after that in the Central Puppet Theatre. Jiří occasionally created some illustrations, but he was mainly devoted to his independent black-white graphic art. However, this was not very salable. He did not get offered many government contracts neither because he was not in the political party. With only one theatre salary for the household we were living pretty much “on the breadline”. In 1973 we were hoping that better times will occur, but hope stroke only once – it came from ČESKOSLOVENSKÝ SPISOVATEL for an illustration for Jehan Rictus‘s book Poezie, which in my opinion worked out very well. Jiří then also got an offer from ALBATROS to illustrate Parolek‘s beautiful book Souboj nad propastí (“Contest Above The Abyss”) and to do illustrations for the book Tam nahoře u těch lidí (“Up There, At Those People”) for the NAKLADATELSTVÍ PRÁCE.
Jiří was never really an entrepreneur and because he was full of energy, he started to build a house in 1974 as he did not have an art studio. He is a person who has exceptional hand-minded skills and who can “get on” with any material (he even sewed my graduation dress for me and made a leather belt with a brass buckle, which was created from a small plate and turned into a decorative shape, and with engraved writing stood on it “for my girl’s potbelly”).
According to the advice of our professional builder: “start with the septic tank because that won’t fall”, we started to conquer rubble and old beams from pulled down buildings. With that we started to build the septic tank and then the house.
The builder had to check the building process and he once said: “Sir, technical colleges should come for excursions to this place!” There were brick arches around each window that immediately captured one’s eye-sight and some of the walls were made of quarry rocks that were carefully finished off. The ceilings were made from oak beams, which we bought as wood for heating from the temporary Troja Bridge. Right, the building did take a long time, but we did have time due the absence of other work.
In 1980 at the Prague Castle in the Golden Street, the shop Díla was selling work of Czech artists. A man called Mr. Münz, who is a graphic art collector and the owner of an advertising company in Cologne bought Jiří’s graphic art. He managed to track us down and find our address via the Federation of Artists and wrote Jiří a letter saying that if Jiří would be interested, he would like to organize several exhibitions. And Jiří was interested. Many exhibitions in the whole of Germany took place. Here and there a small graphic art piece would sell, although the Artcentrum would keep a watchful eye on this matter and would charge fees from the sales.
As for myself, I work as a Speech and Voice Technique lecturer at DAMU (Theatre Academy of Performing Arts in Prague), in dubbing, and occasionally in Czech films and in TV, and I am glad that I can support my husband from the salaries of these activities.
In 1988 ALBATROS wanted Jiří to illustrate a big book called „Severské báje“(“Northern legends”), which was supposed to be published on the break of 1989 – 1990. Jiří created a series of beautiful colourful wood-carvings, however, ALBATROS changed their edition scheme and „Severské báje“(“Northern legends”) were not published.
It was a great honour for Jiří to be accepted as a member of The Hollar Gallery in 2008.
Today we live in a beautiful big house that has at last after 29 years gone through its final building approval. We built it as a house for two generations (duplex), but our son, unfortunately, died when he was twenty-one years old in a car accident. His death was the reason that my husband had an artistic pause. Only recently did several successful exhibitions inspire him to make more plans. For the Černošice church he created a very decorative statue of Saint Václav made out of basswood in human size two years ago and several big, colourful woodcarvings. I hope that this energy and muse will not leave him.
So, let’s get back to work ….and maybe we will even fly in the clouds.

Jana Altmannová