The first idea of starting of the International Sculptural Symposium in Hořice appeared in 1964 during the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the foundation of the Art-Industrial stonemason´s and sculptural school, it means in the time, when the risk of the school closing and moving to Jihlava was present. These celebrations became demostrations against the idea to close the Hořice school and the newly known idea of an international symposium 01) should have supported the importance and tradition of Hořice´s art of sculpture and its 80 years old connection to sculptural school. The idea was successful.

A group of enthusiastic organizators of sculptural symposium (for example the chairman of MNV - lord major Karel Maixner, the new headmaster of the sculptural school Jaroslav Böhm and the Hořice friend of art Karel Krátký) were admittedly able to find a financing of symposium (KNV) and its technical support (SUPŠSK), but they were not experienced in the organization of symposiums and they had not connections to suitable sculptors. So they asked for help from The Czechoslovak Union of visual artists in Prague. It delegated a commissar for the symposium, a sculptor named Vladimír Preclík, who, in that time as a participant of the symposium „FORMA VIVA!“ in Kostanjevic (1964), was aquianted with the run of symposiums and he obtained needed connections (Janez Lenasi, Ko Murai as later participants of Hořice Symposium).

After four years of the Symposium (1966-1969), challenged by the town committee of KSČ (the communist party), the new „normalized“ administration of the town expressed its ideological dissatisfaction with the Symposium. They had a requirement to invite participants only from socialist countries, creating figurative realistic works, for next years of Symposium. Their works should have been exhibited in open local area of the town. Of course, the organizers of the Symposium refused these demands and they rather ended their activities. The Symposium was re-established after twenty years in 1989.

1966 - The view to the quarry of „U Sv. Josefa“. Ladislav Zívr – at the front.		1966 - The organizer of the first Symposium Karel Maixner and the commissar of the Symposium, the sculptor Vladimír Preclík - discussing.