The 1. Open atelier took place in Rudolf Sikora’s apartment on 19^th November 1970. It was a joint exhibition of both younger and older artists who wanted to react to the new conditions under normalisation. In total, 19 artists exhibited their works at the flat at 32 Tehelná street. These artists gathered to both protest against the official socialist realism paradigm and to demonstrate artistic freedom. The very next day, Rudolf Sikora was interrogated by the state security apparatus, the ŠtB.

Open atelier was never repeated until 1989. Exactly 19 years after its very opening, 19 November 1989, Rudolf Sikora played an instrumental role at the establishment of the Public Against Violence movement, when he spoke at the gathering of about 500 citizens at Umelecká beseda.

The Open atelier represented the platform for an alternate way of exhibition. It endeavoured to avoid the official line of thought  both administratively and conceptually. The Open atelier has to a ajor extent outlined Sikora’s future development as well, since he could not openly exhibit and was regularly interrogated by ŠtB since then.