Between tradition and modernism

In 1920's and 1930's the ways of Slovak and European modernism have met for the first time without the burden of previous local complexes and future, during that time unthought-of, constraints.

The Slovak avant-garde has gradually crystallized into two basic, time almost parallel concepts, which together with the original solitary programs of in particular Ester Šimerová-Martinčeková, Imrich Weiner-Kráľ, Andrej Nemeš and Jakub Bauernfreund define a domestic form of "the Slovak variant of modernism."

The founding modernist movement built on the monumentalization of „the Slovak myth" and on sentimental and heroistic relations to the mother-land was represented above all by the work of Martin Benka, and later Miloš Bazovský, Janko Alexy, and Zolo Palugyaya.

The program line of searching and detection of "the soul of the nation" came to the climax and was substantially revised at the same time with the key concepts of modernistic concepts of Mikuláš Galanda and Ľudvít Fulla. The second line of the Slovak modern art reported to the social artificial model of a man and to the open critical commitment. The parallels were openly looked for in the social-expressive directions of the central-European artistic environment. The authentic response was found particularly in the work of the authors of the area of the city of Košice - Eugen Krón, Konštantín Bauer, Anton Jasusch, Július Jakoby, and in an early period of the work of the Koloman Sokol.