Life in the athenaeum was not so different than I was used to. After few weeks I knew that it was not my thing. There was no beating up here but abuses and humiliation stayed the same as was in the primary school. It resulted in the fact that I became more rebellious. You can say that I enjoyed doing just the opposite of what was asked of me. I tried to escape from as many classes as possible except carpentry, metal workshop and technical drawings. Teachers warned me, especially the language teacher, that if I did not start working a little, I will have to do the same class over. I told him I did not care at all. I was simply waiting till I was 14 so that I could start working.
I never touched my home work. It meant that in the evenings, I had quite a lot of free time. While my elder brother was working on his home work, I was drawing or reading. There were 2 books I took over and over again from the library. One was where they explained modern art and I think the title of it was also Modern art explained. The second book explained every technique and medium used for drawing and painting. From pencil, charcoal, watercolors, gauche, pastels, acrylics, oil paints etc. I used that book for 2 years and tried out little bit everything what was described in it. You could see that by the colorful fingerprints I left on the pages of the book. It contained more than 600 pages.
My grandmother used to give me 1 franc, never more, each day so I could buy a big white drawing sheet, I liked so much, for my drawings. I used to buy it from the newspaper shop in my area. I copied images and pictures out of art books and photographs out of weekly magazines. For the rest, I was making sketches in the small sketchbooks I bought from the same shop. I did not show much of what I did to anybody, except to my grandmother, because there was anyhow not much interest for it.
At the end of the first school year, I figured my language teacher was right. I failed. The second school year past quite quick because I had two friends, twins. Their interest in the studies was as good as mine and they too had to do the class over. So the 3 of us made it our aim to do as less as possible of what teachers expected from us and enjoy by making teachers lives miserable by our mischievous behavior. We were more outside the school than we were in. Till now I have quite pleasant memories of the twins. At the end of that school year, I was so happy that I stopped going to school 14 days before it ended.
I never touched my home work. It meant that in the evenings, I had quite a lot of free time. While my elder brother was working on his home work, I was drawing or reading. There were 2 books I took over and over again from the library. One was where they explained modern art and I think the title of it was also Modern art explained. The second book explained every technique and medium used for drawing and painting. From pencil, charcoal, watercolors, gauche, pastels, acrylics, oil paints etc. I used that book for 2 years and tried out little bit everything what was described in it. You could see that by the colorful fingerprints I left on the pages of the book. It contained more than 600 pages.
My grandmother used to give me 1 franc, never more, each day so I could buy a big white drawing sheet, I liked so much, for my drawings. I used to buy it from the newspaper shop in my area. I copied images and pictures out of art books and photographs out of weekly magazines. For the rest, I was making sketches in the small sketchbooks I bought from the same shop. I did not show much of what I did to anybody, except to my grandmother, because there was anyhow not much interest for it.
At the end of the first school year, I figured my language teacher was right. I failed. The second school year past quite quick because I had two friends, twins. Their interest in the studies was as good as mine and they too had to do the class over. So the 3 of us made it our aim to do as less as possible of what teachers expected from us and enjoy by making teachers lives miserable by our mischievous behavior. We were more outside the school than we were in. Till now I have quite pleasant memories of the twins. At the end of that school year, I was so happy that I stopped going to school 14 days before it ended.