The collections of Modern and Contemporary Art are among the most extensive at the Slovak National Gallery. The SNG acquired the first works for these collections almost immediately after its founding in 1948. At that time, it consisted of the work of classical fine art disciplines such as painting, plastic art, graphic art and drawing, which continues to be its foundation while also forming a representative collection of Slovak fine art of the 20th century.
Individual collections map the development of their disciplines, reflect style and opinion lines and record individual artistic acts of the most significant Slovak, European and international artists.
The new collections that were created in the following years were a manifestation of adjustment in the strategy and concept of the SNG collections, which sensitively reacted to the changing situation in 20th century art. Based on the shifts of traditional media of the art scene, the boundaries of classical disciplines were gradually disturbed and began to mutually overlap. Individual media such as painting and sculpting began to expand not only beyond the boundaries of its own artistic type, but also in space; eventually they also integrated the element of time and motion, by means of which the collection of an inter-media character was formed along with - and as a result of the onset of digital representations - the collection of new media.
