Bělostný býk a černé vlaštovky Vzpomínky a příběhy z ateliérů, cest a hospod

Ordinary life in a Czech village before the war, contacts with the Russian artistic avant-garde or meeting fellow artists in pubs, studios and exhibitions. Engagingly recorded personal stories in the context of contemporary events from the 1950s to the 1990s with many colour illustrations.

In his autobiographical stories, Josef Císařovský first returns to his childhood, to the village of Houstoň near Lidice, where he was born and grew up. His grandmother owned and managed the local pub, which, alongside the church, was a central meeting place where many common and personal matters were arranged, information was passed on and stories were told. It was an inspiring place that reflected the traditional world of the village with its intensely communal life, which Josef Císařovský captured and conveyed to today's readers.

The second thematic block of the book reflects Císařovský's post-war study stay in late-Stalinist Soviet Russia. Here he touches on many realities of life in Moscow and Leningrad at the time, but particularly valuable are the memories of the surviving remnants of the Russian avant-garde with whom he befriended.
Císařovský also reflects on the situation of Czech artists in the 1950s and 1960s, the exhibitions and salons that he organised as an art historian, and the bans imposed by the regime on part of the art scene in the context of normalisation. He also describes his trips to exhibitions behind the Iron Curtain, at a time when this was still possible, and then in the 1990s, when he was free to visit his fellow expatriate artists in their studios abroad and hold conversations with them.

Josef Císařovský /1926-2016/ was a Czech art historian and active artist. He published several art history books, including monographs on sculptor Ota Guttfreund, painters Max Švabinský and Bohdan Kopecký, and architect Jiří Kroha. After the signing of Charter 77, however, he was prevented from publishing. In addition to unpublished art historical studies, his estate also includes a number of texts that have a memoir-like dimension.