Almost 15,000 collection items nowadays create the Collection of
Modern and Contemporary Drawing, which was formed from the SNG
Collection of Drawing. The largest and most comprehensive collection of
its kind in Slovakia is focused predominantly on the artists of Central
European and Slovak origin, created in various techniques and drawing
styles on paper. It also incorporates a considerable part of the works
of significant Czech and foreign artists (M. Aleš, I. J. Repin, J.
Rippl-Rónai, O. Kokoschka, M. Jiránek, W. Nowak, J. Štyrský, J. Šíma, A.
Šimotová and others).
The collection incorporates not only sketches but also more elaborated aquarelle and gouache studies on paper, which, thanks to their directness, played a significant role in modern art through innovation taking place on the boundary between drawing and painting. Although these works frequently originated as research of shape and composition in numerous versions for later painting depictions, many of them preserved their autonomy and are valuable documents of the baselines of their artists. This is also true for many preparatory drawings for graphic sheets or sculptures (drawings of A. Stróbl, J. Kostka, R. Uher).
Book illustrations of various
qualities, which constitute a large section of this collection, are
perceived as an overlap of free drawing and applied art. The collection
of works dated after the middle of the 20th century is outlined
differently than the collection of modern drawing up to 1957. To a great
extent the collection is focused on applied drawing - illustration.
This is due to the fact that since 1967, the gallery has organized the
popular Biennale of Illustrations Bratislava on its premises and, up to
1989, significant expert attention was paid to the illustrations of
children's books. The works of such artists as M. Benka, Ľ. Fulla, J.
Čapek, A. Brunovský, A. Klimo are among the most significant sets of
illustrations.
A large set of portraits and caricatures of
figures of cultural life and period artists, self portraits, which adds
life and enriches the collection, all belong to genre drawing. The
collection also incorporates valuable sketchbooks of Slovak modern
artists (M. A. Bazovský, M. Galanda, E. Nevan, E. Špitz).
Thanks
to the intimate nature of the medium of drawing, which has been a
vehicle of the creative element throughout the entire history of art,
the collection maps formal specifics and themes related to local
avant-garde exploits and monitors the wide stream of tendencies of
Modernist fine art. It documents not only the artistic thinking and its
transformations from the beginning of the revolutionary 20th century,
but also the forming of fine art opinions of artists in the context of
the social-cultural state of the country. These opinions affected the
practice, production and purchases of politically involved creations up
to 1989. That was true especially in the 1950s when socialist realism
was promoted as the aesthetic instrument of the totalitarian regime and
during the period of normalization in the 1970s, when sexless
illustrative figuration became the officially preferred genre as the
heritage of sorela (socialist realism).
Themes and their
iconographic structure, in the thoroughness offered by this collection,
constitute significant research material on the development of Slovak
art of the 20th century in the contexts of history of art and culture;
it includes transformed religious symbols in connotations with the
present life of people (for example Perníková Madona (Gingerbread
Madonna) by Ľudovít Fulla from 1952), themes dictated by the
requirements of official socialist fine art dogma or mimicry of artists
escaping this pressure in variations of classical genres from the
history of art (for example bouquets, still lives and nudes of Ján
Mudroch).
The building of separate collection of drawings of
old and modern art began upon the founding of the SNG in 1950. The
Luministic aquarelle Deti na lúke (Children in the Meadow), by Gustav
Mallýaround 1910, one of the fathers of modern painting in Slovakia, who
achieved the thorough building of shape by Cézanne-like geometry later
in his life, was its first work (K1) acquired by a purchase from private
owners six months after the founding of the institution. The following
acquisitions (not only in drawing) were based on the target-oriented
effort of the expert board of trustees to compile an integral collection
of older and modern art, but at the same time to regularly supplement
the collection by the works of contemporaries.
From the first
years of its existence, the gallery collection expanded through
transfers from state institutions and purchases from private owners,
artists and their families, sometimes from significant exhibitions. For
example, in February 1950 the drawings of the so-called war generations
of artists that were active at that time, L. Čemický, V. Hložník, T.
Tekel, J. Želibský and J. Mudroch, were also acquired from the
Contemporary Slovak Art exhibition in Prague.
The collection
gradually accumulated an excellent selection particularly regarding the
artists of the first half of the 20th century. It includes the works of
the artists active by the end of the 19th century in Munich-Budapest
realism (J. Hanula, G. Angyal), the Central European variation of
Impressionism and Luminism in open air landscape painting (L.
Mednyánszky, M. Schurmann, Ľ. Csordák, E. Halász-Hradil, K. Lehotský, I.
Žabota) and folk-descriptive and townsmen figural studies (J. Augusta,
J. Uprka, G. Mallý, Ž. Duchajová-Švehlová).
The influences of
Art Nouveau are documented by the drawings of P. Július Kern, A.
Jasusch and K. Kövari-Kačmarik and the inclination towards Expressionism
is obvious, especially in the charcoal and pastel works of K. Bauer and
K. Sokol. The monumentalizing figurativeness of paintings, gouaches and
pastels of M. Benka and his followers, E. Gwerk, Z. Palugyay, is also
based on the Art Nouveau and Symbolism baseline; M. A. Bazovský and J.
Alexy opened another chapter of work with the line, composition and
re-evaluation of the folk theme. Drawings by K. Harmos, A.
Weisz-Kubínčan, I. Weinera-Kráľ, J. Bauernfreund and E. Nemes reflect
the expressive-surrealistic influence.
Ľ. Fulla and M.
Galanda, the most significant representatives of avant-garde in
Slovakia, are also represented by extensive sets of works. Fulla's work
is represented by a range of artworks from stage designs in the spirit
of Bauhaus up to extensive illustrations. The drawings of E.
Šimerová-Martinčeková, based on French Constructivism, are interesting
addition.
The collection of drawings capturing the second wave of artists of modern Slovak painting with an inclination to Civilism include works by L. Mrázová, E. Nevan, B. Hoffstädter, J. Želibský and artists connected with the surrealistic movement - C. Majerník, J. Mudroch, P. Matejka, L. Guderna and others, eventually including even the works of younger artists with a distinctive drawing style, V. Hložník and E. Zmeták.
In the collection from the second
half of the 20th century, the material dated after 1957 captures the
traces of the most significant post-war tendencies, which are developed
by the activities of the members of the group Konfrontácie
(Confrontations) and the Group of Mikuláš Galanda.
The nature
of drawing as an interdisciplinary medium able to become a platform for
experiment with visual figurativeness and intellectual games was
manifested in its fullness in the art of the Neo-Avant-garde schools.
The collection maps the shift of the focus of the work from the theme to
its creation, material essence (informel) or idea (conceptual art). It
contains studies by artists working with archetypes in sculpting and
painting (R. Uher, J. Kostka, E. Semian, M. Čunderlík, A. Rudavský, M.
Laluha, and P. Tóth), new figuration (R. Krivoš, J. Jankovič, J. Filo,
A. Sigetová, M. Paštéka, D. Králik, V. Popovič) and geometrical
abstraction (M. Dobeš, R. Urbásek, Š. Belohradský, P. Binder, and D.
Binderová). For some of them it also maps their gradual development as
artists in several tendencies, characteristic for Central European
Modernist art. At the same time, the ironic surrealism of K. Baron and
the imaginative tendency typical for the middle stream of Slovak graphic
art from the 1970s (A. Brunovský, D. Kállay, V. Gažovič, R. Brun) was
widely applied in drawing.
The works of conceptual art such
as the scores of new "Cageian" music by M. Adamčiak from 1966,
conceptional sculptures and other works by V. Havrilla, text diagrams by
J. Koller and the Cosmos series of drawings (1971) by S. Filko,
prospective projects by J. Jankovič, concepts by the sculptor J. Meliš,
scores by D. Tóth, conceptual drawings by M. Kern, O. Laubert and the
large format ZOO Bratislava (1981) by P. Bartoš as his other projects
and the cycle of maps by P. Kalmus are also represented in the
collection. The more intimate techniques of artists of analytical
painting from the circle of the pedagogue R. Fila (M. Bočkay, K.
Bočkayová, M. Meško, and I. Minárik) and the special contribution of
action and diary drawing by I. Kalný in a larger set of works also found
their application in this collection.
Examples of the
contemporary art that uses drawing in a new context with other media,
the acquisitions of the work of D. Lehocká, who experimented with
artistic techniques (for example, drawing by slat), the work on paper by
E. Binder, which are sprayed by acrylic spray paints, and diary
drawings of S. Mikyta, are worth mentioning.
The future of the collection anticipates further additions of older works of Slovak art, particularly from the second half of the 20th century, as well as contemporary works from the past two decades, in which the long-term expansion of drawing in the space, in connection with the penetration of the new media and technologies in the visual art practice, is applied.