Obituary of Růžena Žertová

Dear mourners,

we bidding farewell to an outstanding personality of our artistic culture and a rare human being, architect Růžena Žertová. A personality of great talent that she could only express due to the dramas of the time with a series of limitations, but always with an open mind and a clear opinion.

As she liked to say, her father was Žert, her mother Veselá, and they got married in Smíchov. However, she grew up in the valley of the magical river Ostravice, which was flanked on one side by the poetic silhouette of the Beskid mountains from Prašivá, through Lysá hora, Ondřejník to Kněhyně, and on the other by a jumble of chimneys and shafts of the Ostrava industry. The exact place of her birth is not known; it was supposedly somewhere on the way from Frýdek to Vítkovice. As if it foreshadowed her journey across the whole republic from Košice to Ústí nad Labem, where she would later place her proud department stores a few decades later… Her father was a member of the Sokol organization, a musician, and a hero of the resistance, sentenced to death, from which he escaped by mere luck.

His daughter was also such a rebellious spirit: an architect against her will. Inherited from her mother, she wanted to study textiles at the Applied Arts School, but during the time of Stalinism, she could eventually only enroll in architecture at ČVUT in Prague. However, unpleasant purges were taking place there at the time, and she ultimately preferred to continue from the second year at the technical university in Brno. In order to achieve anything, one must meet the right people at the right moment. And she truly succeeded in that. At Rybářská, she met the kind and genius professor Bedřich Rozehnal and his team at the Institute of Useful Structures. The oldest among them was the former member of the British army, Jaromír Sirotek, the next was the graduate of Baťa's School of Art, Zdeněk Řihák, and finally Ivan Ruller. Among them, lifelong friendships developed.

At the same time, she became a confidante, as she called herself a "willow," of Professor Rozehnal during times when he was subjected to harassment by the Ostrava mafia Meduna, Alexy, and the secret police. She defended her thesis on the topic of a maternity hospital in Frýdek at the end of 1956, while her younger brother Petr experienced the most disgraceful moment in the history of the Brno school with the expulsions of Fuchs and Kopřiva and the two-and-a-half-year imprisonment of Bedřich Rozehnal.

After a failed attempt to study scenography with Professor Troester at Prague’s DAMU, searching for a position in Ostrava and Brno, and undergoing personnel checks at Potravinoprojekt, where she was threatened with being sent to manual labor, she moved in 1960 to the State Project Institute of Trade. The second lucky moment of her life. Jaromír Sirotek had just become its director, and over 10 years he built this institute into one of the leading design institutions in the country with branches in Prague and Bratislava, where he offered opportunities to a number of young talented architects – Zdeňka Řiháka in Brno, Ivan Matušík in Bratislava, or Alena Šrámková, Jindřich Pulkrábek and Michal Sborwitz in Prague. He noticed Růžena Žertová's original thinking and enabled her to carry out a two-decade-long chain of projects with newly conceived department stores across the length of the republic. And with his well-known thoroughness, although he himself was removed from his position for political reasons in 1970, he ensured conditions for her to continue her work for a long time.

Her department stores of the new generation replaced the previously commonly used 6x6 m module with a module of 9 and 12 m in clearly and generously composed structures with a stereotomically closed façade, to which she lent a plastic texture – in Košice, Michalovce, Ústí nad Labem, or Ostrava. The first from this chain, PRIOR in Košice, was praised by another great teacher, Bohuslav Fuchs, when he noted that the building brought many new and successful ideas as its functional layout transformed its tectonics into stereotomy and when its concrete structure, essentially derived from the Renaissance palace façade, gave the base decorative function.

However, Růžena Žertová's culminating work will forever remain the department store in Pardubice. The generous and lapidary spatial structure of steel construction with a basic 9x9 m module, featuring chamfered corners and red brick infill, reflects not only the structuralist and brutalist tendencies in the free part of Europe but also reminds of the traditions from which the author's way of thinking originated – such as geometrically conceived buildings by Josip Plečnik and his Slovenian school, the legacy of Henrik Petrus Berlage, or the provocative design of the wholesale market in Kotěra's specialty by Jaromír Krejcar.

Alongside this impressive array of major realizations, there were also unfulfilled studies left behind that deserve our attention – a skyscraper for Prague Bohnice or a design for a department store in the square in Jihlava, praised by Jaromír Sirotek because it represented a fundamental "turn by creating a department store as a terrace in the square space." A missed opportunity for one of the most beautiful Moravian squares...

There are no small tasks for an architect, my father used to say, and Růžena Žertová was well aware of this. When her further stay in the project institute in the 80s became unbearable, she left with her head held high to go freelance and turned those small tasks into great ones. For example, that charming little house above Brno, which she built for herself and her husband Igor on what was supposedly an unbuildable plot, or those with a gable roof that resonate with the surrounding construction in Komín or Sokolnice.

And of course, a very extensive and original design oeuvre in the field of lighting, furniture, or jewelry, to which she even designed dresses from pure joy of creativity.

She also made a brilliant impact for four years in my scientific-artistic council at the Faculty of Architecture, where all generations of leading architects from Ivan Ruller to Jan Bočan, Aleš Burian, and Petr Pelčák met, and where she applied her unfailing instinct for real values and articulated direct and very compelling criticism precisely.

The gold medal from VUT and the Minister of Culture's award are just a modest satisfaction for her admirable work.

A woman of pure character and joy in creation did not have an easy life – she faced difficult moments: the departure of her husband and then the tragedy of her younger brother Petr. In the twilight of her life, she remained ill in her little house, supported by the sympathies of a few friends and the help of friends whom I would like to thank here. She loved people and was always a kind and hospitable companion with a unique peppery humor, which is best understood by those baptized by the river Ostravice, while Prague has no idea about it. She was also a wizard at the kitchen counter: Vladimír Palla reportedly still licks his lips up there over her dill sauce, and I will always remember not only our talks about architecture but also her fragrant, genuine "místecké" baked sausages in puff pastry, which she could easily outshine our whole family matriarchal clan, as well as joyful evenings in an elevated mood at the Siroteks, Rullers, or Pelčáks… We will all miss her indomitable positive energy, with which she overcame numerous adversities. She may serve as a rare example in that regard.

Růžena Žertová very much wished to leave this world from her home environment. This, despite great efforts and to our sorrow, was not possible. It's a signal that our society is still far from being alright...

In the summer of 1966, Růžena and her husband traveled to Liverpool on a secret mission to deliver documents for Rozehnal's exhibition to Arnošt Wiesner, which then took place during the Prague Spring…. And so she spent one unforgettable beautiful sunny day with Arnošt Wiesner. And he is here today with us, assisting in this dignified space with the arrival of architect Růžena Žertová to where she belongs – to the Moravian architectural heaven with all those friends I briefly mentioned here. She enters as the first woman… Chapeau…

In deep respect, Růžena, thank you for everything…