We recorded this interview with Kája Saudek on a cold, sunny Tuesday, April 11, 2006. In the morning at 9:00 AM, he opened the door for me and Dr. Richard Knot, who introduced me to Kája. Surprisingly, he was in a good, energetic mood. None of us knew that this would be our last meeting, and that Kája would never even read this interview. Three days later, he was hospitalized in a coma (he passed away ten years later, in June 2015). It was a shock for all of us. I had known him for three years, and we had organized three joint exhibitions in Prague. I showcased my photographic art, and Kája displayed his paintings and drawings (using watercolors and oils). We both admired the beauty of women, we both loved art, and we simply understood each other on a human level. We even organized a very successful and large exhibition for Kája. We never published this interview. We felt it was unethical towards Kája. Therefore, you are reading an exclusive interview with this Czech king of comics, and you are also seeing the last photographs taken during his interesting and eventful life. He was direct, natural, a bit of a showman, he had a sense of humanity, and I loved him. Here is at least the most interesting part of the interview.

Kája, in just a few days, you will be celebrating your 70th birthday. How are you enjoying this stage of life?

My advanced age has its advantages. The other day, when I slipped on some ice, a very young, beautiful girl helped me up and offered to guide me. That wouldn't have happened when I was 20.

It is known that you are a very hardworking person. Now, are you working at a slower pace, or have you maintained the same intensity?

I've actually sped up because I suffer from insomnia, so I work, as they say, day and night.

You had a period in your paintings, which people called the "gray period." Now you're painting with white backgrounds. What led you to that?

Yes, I'm now painting with white backgrounds; there's nothing more beautiful. No, I discovered that there is more interest in color images. This applies even to publications, where they pay more for color images. Black and white is also more difficult because you can't add blue to the sky; you have to somehow create the illusion of clouds, otherwise it looks like a solid white. This "white period," as you call it, has been going on for about 5 years, and it's been going well. No, it's not about that. I've been painting women since I was 12 years old, when I knew absolutely nothing about female anatomy. When I became an adult, someone in the security services learned that I was painting women, and they conducted a house search. And you won't believe this, they sent me to prison for 18 months for "endangering public morality." I hadn't even published anything, and it was 1964. Now, 40 years later, with the help of friends and friendly publishers, I managed to publish an erotic classic that my father, who was born in the previous century, quoted. He didn't speak Czech, but he took passages from it. It's "The Knight Smil." I was rewarded financially for that, not criminally.

How did this experience influence your life and your work?

I was only there for a very short time because it was a crime for which amnesty applied. Yes, so I reported to Pankrác on May 5th, and I received amnesty on May 9th. Life is like that, because in the past, they mainly punished people who were stealing state property and those who didn't pay child support. There were a lot of those. Now, I think there are real criminals there, but back then, the charge of "indecent exposure" seemed to imply that I might have been, say, lowering my pants in front of a girls' school. No! It was because the security services at the time could only obtain information about these things in this way, and they could even get promoted for it. The trial where I and my brother were tried – he achieved worldwide fame with the photos, or rather, the documents, he had of himself – I took the blame for what they were accusing him of, because he already had a family, and he's lost it three times since then. So, they only gave him a suspended sentence. And I ended up only serving four days.

You exclusively paint women, but are there certain types you prefer, like blondes or brunettes?

Well, personally, I prefer women with darker hair. You can't really see much of the blonde, it all blends together. But back in my day, women were wonderfully hairy. They had no idea about things like shaving their pubic hair, let alone under their arms. Those were beautiful times. My young friend, David Neff, the son of Ondřej Neff, said that he knows a guy his age who is young and doesn't even know that women can be hairy, because he's only ever seen shaved women. So, he's afraid of encountering hairiness if he ever does. And I'm afraid of not encountering it anymore.

When you start painting, do you begin with the eyes, the face, the hair, the overall composition, or the outline of the body, or is it different each time, or do you always start with the same thing?

It's the same, but I don't think it really matters. I sketch it out with a pencil, like many of my famous colleagues. And if I like it, then I render it in color.

Tell us about your first love?

My first love, please, I've talked about her many times before. It was Helenka Růžičková. We were 14 and went to school together, and I wish she were still alive, and I wish I were too.

How many times can a person experience true love?

I almost said many times, but now I'm writing an article for MF Dnes, and I'm trying to please my beloved wife by saying that I've only fallen in love four times in my life, and each time it was with her. Of course, that's not true.

What do you think your muse looks like?

The muse, of course, is a woman. A woman who, no matter what angle you look at her from, and no matter what position she's in, even if she's sitting on the toilet, is always incredibly desirable, interesting, and attractive. I didn't come up with that. It was Dr. Bohumil Hrabal, who described a "vision" in his novel "I Served the English King," where a girl was shown to some older gentlemen, who were older than Mladá Boleslav, and no matter what angle they looked at her from, there was always something to see. A woman is never boring.

How do you maintain such good health? Do you exercise, eat rationally, or do you regularly engage in sexual activity (RPA), like Dr. Knot or your brother Jan Saudek?

That's a good question. I can't really talk about the regularity of my walks, but if I do go out, it's usually on foot, because, for example, at night I sometimes go down to Vrchlické Street twice to buy a box of wine from the store, so that's about 4 km each time, which means I walk about 8 km at night. During the day, I also walk if I'm feeling up to it.

We know you mostly work at night. When you look at a painting you've been working on or have finished in daylight, do you see it differently?

As you know, my dear friend, I'm known to drink heavily. It's interesting that I often create paintings while in a somewhat altered state, and when I look at them later, when I'm sober, it's still the same. Yes, it's a routine. It's like an opera singer who, even if they've had 12 beers, can still sing beautifully. Basically, the work flows easily for me, and drinking doesn't really hinder me. That's all.

You've influenced an entire generation of artists. Who influenced you?

You guys weren't even born yet! That's ancient history. Back then, we had a maid, a beautiful young woman. I couldn't afford that now. We were together in 1939, at the now-defunct Kino Revoluce, although it wasn't called that yet, before the war. We were there for the Czech premiere of Walt Disney's animated film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." It's been over 70 years since that studio created that groundbreaking film. And because we were just kids, we didn't believe it was animated. We thought it was real. Well, at least, that's what we thought at the time. It was a live-action film. It wasn't until 60 years later that I learned that even Snow White herself was a real actress who was just traced by the animators at that studio. They photographed and filmed her, and as she acted, they simply traced her and created a drawing from her. But that drawing was alive, and that's what W. Disney created, something that no computer can do today. It's the fact that those people are actually drawings, but they're alive. That influenced us so much that my little brother once made a wonderful observation: when the beautiful queen transformed into a witch, he stood up and said, "Okay, let's go home." That became a family tradition for years and years. Well, everyone's gone now, except for me and my beloved brother. He's still with us.

Do you have a particular painting or motif that you especially like?

I like the paintings that sell well. And you can paint anything. Today, my daughter, who is probably too young to be awake right now, helps me make copies of those paintings. I'm happy to give her the money she earns from it, because she charges prices that are somewhat different from what I would charge, but I'm still living in the past. So I give her the money, but she's also a good artist in her own right, and she creates her own things. We won't go to her, because she's always unprepared, but she knows how to paint, unlike me, and she also makes copies of my drawings. She enlarges them, and that's what the buyers are looking for.

Do you still listen to music while you paint?

I listen to old Baroque music because everything else annoys me or I don't want to hear it. Old Baroque music, which has been tested over the centuries. Recently, I had the opportunity to paint a poster for a music company from Liberec, featuring Mozart himself. They gave me a very clever assignment because, as you know, there are no surviving portraits of Mozart, so they asked me to draw the actor who played him in Forman's film, a kind of non-committal, cheerful face. So I drew him with a white wig, and they said it was a success. They even paid me for it.

You've had very successful exhibitions recently in Hranice and Vsetín. What did you think of Moravia?

It was amazing that so much was sold in Hranice and Vsetín. I may never see those paintings or the money again, but it's gratifying because you yourself told me that even established local artists don't sell that much. Despite my creaky knees, I've finally become somewhat known. I think my little brother is to blame, he's the one doing the advertising (though it's not very good, but even bad advertising is still advertising). **What did the Moravian girls and women think of the exhibitions in Hranice and Vsetín? They were apparently completely infatuated with you and almost "stung" you?** They weren't infatuated with me, I was more infatuated with them. But I realized a long time ago that the most beautiful girls are in Moravia. It's not that Czech girls can't take care of themselves, but the best girls I've met are from Moravia. **Prepared by: Jan Vojtěch / gnews.cz**