Collaboration

Bedřich Kopecný

(13. 1913 Vídeň - 1. 11. 1972 Praha)

Co-founder of Neprakta, journalist, writer, columnist, orientalist, draftsman and plaintiff Jiří Winter. They were united not only by their hard work, but also by their lifelong friendships. He collaborated on the creation of cartoon humor from 1949 to 1970. Together they published almost 10,000 drawings.

"Bedřich Kopecný was an excellent author in the field of humor, both written and drawn. Together with the draftsman Jiří Wintra, they founded the creative duo NEPRAKTA. Bedřich Kopecný's original, inimitable themes sparkled on the pages of Dikobraz and other magazines for many years. Unfortunately, today we can only remember the times when his typical cards came to Porcupine meetings, on which he designed the drawing and the text. Those were rare moments when one could laugh heartily. Bedřich Kopecný's joke was not only great fun, but often also a deep life philosophy. Humor was not a business for him, but a need, a necessity, an outlook on life. He had the most basic prerequisites to be able to do humor well: he had a big heart and lived a rich life. Unfortunately, not very long. He died six years ago, and this year, on March 1, we remember his missed sixty-fifth birthday."

Dikobraz č. 9, March, 1 , 1978

Miloslav Švandrlík

(* August 10, 1932 in Prague, † October 29, 2009 in Prague) 

Writer, humorist and deputy Jiří Winter. He met Jiří Winter in the Porcupine newsroom in the mid-1950s. In 1960, he won the Haškovy Lipnice literary competition and, at the invitation of the Havlíčkův Brod publishing house, wrote the short story Bloody Bill and Viola, illustrated by the winner of the Lipnica art competition Neprakta. Since 1960, Winter has illustrated almost all of his books, short stories and comics. Švandrlík took over the "function" of the plaintiff after Bedřich Kopecný in August 1970 and published over 20,000 cartoon jokes under the brand Neprakta-Švandrlík.

"Miloslav and I met several times a week, but we rarely visited each other. He didn't like to go out with people, and if I didn't go somewhere with him, he preferred to sit at home in Chodov. He met a lot of people in my company, we were walking along Wenceslas Square, for example, and every few steps someone would stop us and start talking. They mostly told some interesting or funny stories, and Miloslav often drew inspiration for his works from them. It was enough for him to remember a situation or a simple plot of a story and he wrote a whole book about it. It happened that he came up with the idea of ​​processing some historical event, writing about some important person, or describing some invention or scientific field. He asked, "Do you know anything about it?"

About Jiří Winter from the book Průšvihy firmy Neprakta, Oldřich Dudek, 1997 

Emil Schneider

(* October 1, 1949 in Prague, † 2010 in Prague)

 Originally an electrician by profession, for health reasons he began to make a living as a freelance journalist. The acquaintance with Jiří Winter during an interview for the magazine provided the basis for a wider cooperation. Since 1996, Emil Schneider has been supplying themes for cartoon jokes and delivering finished drawings to the editors of Rytmus života, Security and Criminalistics, Lightning, Woman and Life, Porcupine, Telegraf or Tina. They published almost a thousand jokes together. 

Mgr. Ladislav Bezděk (* 1958) 

Photographer, film historian and conservationist 

He graduated from the Secondary Industrial School of Graphic Arts, majoring in applied photography, and film science at the Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University. From 1981 to 1990 he worked in Vladimír Uhr's photo studio at the State Institute for the Reconstruction of Monuments and Buildings, and since 1993 he has been working at the National Monuments Institute (formerly SÚPP) as the head of the documentation funds department. He has long been involved in research into methods for digitizing paintings, photo archives and cinematographic works. 

Jiří Winter illustrated micro-stories about dogs in his magazine Pes-přítel člověka to his longtime friend Jiří Winter. Since 1992, Ladislav Bezděk has been supplying Neprakt with ideas for some Porcupine jokes as well as cartoon erotic jokes published in Sexbox magazines. Sorry in NEIreport. They published several dozen jokes together, in addition to which they published the Calendar of the Love Chapter and the book Nepraktův erotic depository.

Jaroslav Kopecký

(February 10, 1945 in Prague, since 1975 residence in Unhošt)

admirer, collector, archivist, collaborator of Jiří Winter and editor of the book Bold line with black ink 

He worked in the field of computer technology all his professional life. He started working on the creation of the author duo Neprakta in 1959. Like many of his peers, he cut out cartoon jokes and pasted them into notebooks, bought books with Winter's illustrations and collected everything related to the Neprakta brand. In 1962, he participated in the Haškovy Lipnice art competition with his own drawings. In Lipnice, he had the opportunity to meet Jiří Winter in person. 

In 1964, at the opening of an exhibition in Roztoky near Prague, he introduced himself to Bedřich Kopecný. From the spring of 1964, he visited Winter's studio in Střešovice for several years and discussed with him the creation of cartoon humor and his growing collection. He expanded the collection of Neprakt's works with other artifacts - posters and leaflets, theater programs, occasional prints, New Year's cards and congratulations, board games and advertising items. In the last years of Winter's life, he visited his office every week and devoted himself to organizing an archive of the original drawings. Together with the author, he identified individual drawings. All drawings were carefully recorded in books, kept since 1949, and each drawing had its own serial number. On a number of originals, this numerical designation was missing, so it was added together with information about the publication of the image. During the eight years of cooperation, it was possible to "identify" almost all the drawings, but due to Winter's extensive work, the archiving continues.

Since 2003, Kopecký has been cooperating with the Epocha publishing house on the continuous publication of books from the creation of the Neprakta brand. Over the years, cooperation was also established with other publishing houses. As an editor, he collaborated on more than 30 titles, for three publications he is the author of the text for Winter's illustrations. An extensive representative monograph, which has not yet been published for financial reasons, is being prepared for publication. Currently, Kopecký's collection has over 50,000 items, mostly clippings from newspapers and magazines. This includes over 400 books illustrated by Winter, nearly 200 posters and notice boards, and a variety of art-related items. He is the main archivist and co-author of the website.