Authors | Ema Blažková

Ema Blažková, Conversation through a barred window, Small Fortress Terezín, 1942, pencil, cartoon, 21.8 x 16.4 cm, PT 2318

Ema Blažková, Libuna Čížková singing in cell No. 21, Small Fortress Terezín, 1942, pencil, paper, 16 x 15.8 cm, PT 12280

Ema Blažková, Seated women during a Sunday “frajštunde”, Small Fortress Terezín, 1942, pencil, cartoon, 21.7 x 31.7 cm, PT 2325

Ema Blažková, View of the Women´s Courtyard, Small Fortress Terezín, 1942, india ink pen-drawing, cartoon, 32.3 x 22.3 cm, PT 2324

Ema Blažková, Women inmates in the courtyard, Small Fortress Terezín, 1942, pencil, colored pencil, cartoon, 21.5 x 16.6 cm, PT 2317

Ema Blažková

Ema Blažková was born in Prague on August 31, 1924, into a family of civil servants. During the war, she studied at a grammar school in Roudnice nad Labem. Less than a month after the assassination of the acting Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942), she was arrested by the Kladno Gestapo, together with another 83 students, on June 20, 1942. As a pretext for this clampdown during the Heydrichiad was a framed-up accusation relating to a planned assassination attempt on Alfréd Bauer (1897–1945), headmaster of the German primary school in Roudnice. All the students were taken for interrogation to the Police Prison in Terezín’s Small Fortress, and most of them, except for some 20 students transported to concentration camps, were released after several months This Gestapo crackdown had tragic consequences resulting in the death of the 18 out of the 84 originally imprisoned students. In the Women’s Courtyard of the Small Fortress cell No. 21 was assigned to girls. Despite the depressing environment, Ema Blažková was able to acquire a pencil and some scraps of paper and began to depict everyday life in the Small Fortress. As time went by, Ema painted different parts of the Women's Courtyard or scenes from her cell. Her portraits of fellow prisoners were particularly distinctive. She was also obliged to make paintings for her prison guards. Despite being released from prison on November 2, 1942, Ema’s troubles did not end yet.

The Gestapo re-arrested her in the autumn of 1944, this time as part of the Nazi project of forced labor deployment for the Czech inhabitants. She worked as an unskilled laborer in a factory that repaired aircraft engines at Babí near Náchod, in the rubber plant Kudrnáč in Náchod, and on the construction of the Štěchovice river dam.

After the war, Ema Blažková finished her studies at the Roudnice grammar school, studied drawing and painting at the Czech Technical University in Prague, the Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. As a graduated academic painter, she specialized primarily in landscape painting and portraits (focusing on portraiture of children). But she devoted herself to still life, genre motifs, illustrations for children, and also taught figural painting. Her frequently depicted motifs include various secluded spots in Prague, scenes from the Podřipsko region or Příbram district. She did not exhibit her paintings only in Czechoslovakia but also presented her art abroad.

Experiences of her incarceration in the Small Fortress Terezín and of the communist regime that subsequently came to power in her country affected Ema Blažková to such an extent that she developed an irrepressible aversion to totalitarianism. Her antipathy to the ruling communist regime culminated in the 1970s. She was arrested on trumped-up charges and her detention in Prague’s Ruzyně Prison resulted in an outbreak of severe mental disease, which greatly handicapped her for the rest of her life. Ema Blažková, mother of three children, died on August 31, 2003, on her 79th birthday.