I wanted to do more on my own, to see more, to know new things, to take some chances. And of course, the only chance I had to go out of Bulgaria was to go to Czechoslovakia -- which was also a Communist country, but more liberal. I was on my way. Czechoslovakia owns a good number of original works of art by western artists, but mostly in secret, in private homes. Through E.F. Burian's friends, I was given the opportunity to see original works for the first time. I had seen reproductions before, but never the originals. There in Prague I saw works by Picasso, Klee, Miro and Kandinsky. Burian knew very many old curators and things like that and through him I could see the first originals of western art.