You do not believe that Rumcajs and the social changes before the year 1968 had something in common? So what do you think about the third and the fourth chapters from the book of Václav Čtvrtek? And thus was the Rumcajs´ cobbler´s declaration: A good shoe, it is the ground of a rightful world. It mustn’t be too tight, so even the smallest pinkie won’t feel squeezed in it, neither too big, so the pinkie doesn’t feel lost there.
It comes to a dispute between Rumcajs and the Mayor Humpál even in the first chapter. We all know the consequences: When Rumcajs does not praise his huge foot and mentions that he is going to make a shoe for his little foot before he says three times a fig, the mayor gets so mad and orders that this sign be placed on his store: For insulting the mayor’s foot, closed forever!
. The servants ordered him out of the town and took him to the wood Řáholec. And thus from a brave hero, who dared to answer back to the nobility, he became a knight of the road.
It was the writer Václav Čtvrtek, who made all that up in the first half of the 60´s. In 1966 the book got the director Václav Bedřich, who addressed the designer Radek Pilař. He asked him to cooperate on the new strip cartoon about a kind-hearted knight of the road.
We shouldn’t omit the fact that Pilař also had a beard himself and so making a character of Rumcajs was like making his own self-portrait. He got the screenplay at Christmas 1966 and in the course of the year 1967 drew all the needed characters. They were animated by Antonín Bureš who was, by the way, a grandfather of the famous actor Marek Vašut, and at the turn of 1967-68 was already in this new serial of “Večerníček”.
People were sitting in front of the television, hoping and believing that goodness and love prevails over stupidity and lies.
noted down Radek Pilař in his diary.
The favourable response of viewers after broadcasting this cartoon encouraged both Čtvrtek and Pilař. “People believe an animated hero who longs for justice and a family life”, wrote down the designer in his diary in 1968. However, he wrote down a much more sad note couple months later in here: I went through the political changes in depression. I was excluded from the Association of the Czech graphic artists.
Radek Pilař
Radek Pilař (1930-1993) is among others the author of “ Večerníček” – a boy with a paper cap, who runs up and down the stairs, drives a car, rides a horse and throwis sheets of paper depicting each cartoon. It is the oldest television theme which was introduced in 1965. He was concerned with illustrations, paintings, graphics, photo-assemblage and video art. He founded the department of animation and video at the FAMU in Prague in 1990, where he became a lecturer. If you want to be reminded of all his fairy tales characters and be surprised by his remarkable production, make a trip to Jičín. Visit so called “Porotní hall” (Hall of Jury) in the Wallenstein chateau or the gallery of Václav Čtvrtek and Radek Pilař. There you can see the exhibition called “Know-unknown Radek Pilař” until September 3.
Berta Štenclová