BARČÍK - KRIVOŠ - LALUHA AND THEIR IMAGES OF A MAN

A human figure and a man's face are the anthropological constants in the development of the fine arts. The need to depict life in its diversity motivates to the most peculiar expressions of human imagination and creativity. In modern art and also in the chapters of the national arts of Central European region, figurative production remains to be important. Besides irrelevant abstractions and conceptual tendencies of Postmodernism, a man and his shape, figure, and its appearance are an endless source of information about the period and its style, social values, cultural priorities, political ideologies, and religious traditions. We can observe three different approaches to the depiction of a man in the example of works by three significant personalities of modern art in Slovakia: Andrej Barčík, Milan Laluha and Rudolf Krivoš; held in the collections of the Turiec Gallery in Martin. In the following presentation these three members of the important artist's Skupina Mikuláša Galandu (“Mikuláš Galanda Group”) (five collective exhibitions: 1957 – Žilina, SR; 1959 – Bratislava, SR; 1962 – Bratislava; 1965 – Bratislava; 1968 – Berlin, Germany) do not represent any group production program but they are solitary and have individual creative approaches to portraying a man.

Rational linearity dominates both the frontal portraits and the following drawing of a female face. Human physiognomy is minimalistically indicated in a practically naive plan of the frontal view of the portrayed person. The sex of both of them is distinguishable in their faces only by the hairstyle convention, while their features are constantly limited to elementary outlines. In general the stress laid on the contour is a characteristic feature of Modernist drawing and linear painting. Think of the arrangement of geometric figures by Cubists and Futurists, tremulous line of Expressionists, as well as trivialization of body masses and formal composition of objects in case of Modern School of Paris. And it was the very reflections of Chagall's simplification and Rousseau's naiveness are clearly present in Barčík's works.

“Naturally, the new figuration represents not only a single stream, within the contemporary production, which follows the line of studying a man and inner dramas inside the individual. In contrast to Surrealism, fantasy, Informel painting, the new figuration has a certain peculiarity: it solves problems more publicly. It views its own drama not only individually, but on the social basis. Not only as the crisis of feelings, but as the crisis of values. Therefore it is more affected and public, even when mocking public, and more collective where the collective is criticized. It is critically humanistic.” NOVÁK, Luděk: K estetice nové figurace (“Towards Aesthetics of New figuration”) (1967). In: ŠEVČÍK, Jiří – MORGANOVÁ, Pavlína – DUŠKOVÁ, Dagmar: České umění 1938-1989 – programy, kritické texty, dokumenty (“Czech Art 1938–1989 – Programs, Critical Texts, Documents”). Praha : Akademia, 2001, p. 317.