The Collection of Naïve
Art is a specific SNG
collection which contains paintings, plastic art, drawings and graphic
art. It was created in 1965 when the International Department of Naïve
Art was established. It was founded by Štefan Tkáč, an important
theoretician in the area of naïve art and the founder of the
international event Triennial of the Naïve Art at the SNG. He was the
one who was most responsible for the profiling of this collection.
From
the beginning, the aim of the creation of this collection was to
concentrate on the works of various figures of naïve art in order to
capture other borderline forms of untrained art. The collection was also
built as a set of works - the object of research with the aim to
reflect the relationship between professional and untrained art, their
mutual overlaps and effects. The orientation to the work of non-trained
authors relates not only to the search for authenticity in fine art or
the return to the roots of creating, but also to the wider question
regarding nature, essence and the sense of art in general.
The
focus of this collection is the permanent collection of naïve art
oriented on the 20th century. Today it contains over 800 works of
significant Slovak and foreign naïve artists. This representative
selection of over seventy authors represents the techniques and
tendencies resonating in Slovak and European naïve art.
The
poetic-realistic and metaphoric and fantasy forms of naïve art are
represented by the works of Slovak culture (Ondrej Šteberl, Anna
Ličková, Juraj Lauko, Zuzana Virághová, Július Považan, Ľudovít Kochoľ,
Júlia Bartuszová, Mária Žilavá, Štefan Siváň from Slovakia and Martin
Jonáš, Zuzana Chalupová, Ján Kňazovic, Ján Sokol from the Slovak enclave
in Serbia).
The international part is constituted by works
from Central and Western Europe (Václav Beránek, Natalie Schmidtová,
Václav Žák, Rudolf Dzurko from the Czech Republic, Lucien Viellard from
France , Erich Bödeker and Elisabeth Gevaert from Germany ) and Ivan
Rabuzin and Ivan Lacković from Croatia and others). The acquisition
programme is also oriented on art brut and the art of outsiders with the
aim to capture other original forms of non-trained fine art.
Significant works of important authors of these movements and schools of non-trained art of the 20th and 21st century (Nikifor, Justyna Matysiak from Poland, Yeshayahu Scheinfeld from Israel, Kiymet Benita Bock from Turkey, Anna Zemánková from Czech Republic, Zbyněk Semerák from Czech Republic, Vasilij Romanenkov from Russia, Ogjen Jeremic from Serbia, Gérard Sendrey, Claudine Goux and Adam Nidzgorski from France or Eva Droppová from Slovakia) were acquired through donations thanks to the inter4national event Triennial of Naïve Art entitled Insita, which the SNG revived in 1994.
The collection also features other borderline phenomena: folk art in Slovakia, particularly from the 19th century with an emphasis on traditional folk painting and plastic art. The Collection of Folk Art contains over 500 works.