Slovak Sceneries

Ostrov Kormoránov (The Isle of Cormorants) is a nature reserve on the Danube, named after its unique bird habitat, which was flooded during the construction of Gabčíkovo dam and reservoir. The river creates wide alluvial plains and small islands parallel to its regulated flow, with specific biotopes within.

Štefan Prohászka-Tallós was a Hungarian artist who often exhibited in Bratislava. He was known for expressive, almost grotesque depictions of public events, markets and feasts, sometimes commenting on the Slovak-Hungarian social tensions. This is one of his more peaceful and nature-oriented works.

Komárno is Slovakia's principal port on the Danube and the former fortress against the expansion of the Ottoman Turks. The shipyard industrial district was the city's primary force of modern post-war economic development. Hundreds of river and seagoing cargo vessels were built here.

Karol Kállay was a world-renowned photographer, who created iconic character shots of people from all walks of life and in many countries, including Mexico, Italy, Japan, USA and the Soviet Union. His sense of light, composition and inherent humanism influenced generations of photographers, not only in Slovakia.

Gustav Mallý was one of the founders of Slovak modern painting, an influential pedagogue and organiser of exhibition group activities. While part of his work is very thematic and observatory, many pieces just elude the joy of painting and the fascination with light and colour.

This street in the town Pezinok gets more hazy towards the vanishing point and nicely captures the nostalgia of daily dusk.

Červený Kameň is one of the many bastions on the summits of Small Carpathians. They formed the chain of the Kingdom of Hungary’s frontier defence castles ranging from Pressburg (Bratislava) to Žilina. The surrounding landscape is a domain of dense forests, wide meadows and small lakes.

Ernest Zmeták was an important painter, graphic artist and art collector, who gathered many influences, but his work maintained stylistic continuity. Zmeták's paintings are easily recognisable by their confident brush strokes, formal austerity and careful colour balance. He often travelled to Italy and in his art we can see the similarities between Slovak landscape and that of Tuscany.

The village Čičmany is known as the first folk architecture reserve in the world. Timbered houses here have very specific white ornaments of unclear origins. Some of the houses burned down in the 20th century, but were recreated by an influential architect Dušan Jurkovič.

The mysterious patterns caught the attention of idiosyncratic Neo-Avantgarde artist Július Koller, who worked with concepts of communication, universal symbolism and cosmo-humanistic culture. He simulated the Čičmany ornaments with a raster of question marks - his typical sign, which represents perpetual questioning.

The Váh is the longest river in Slovakia, flowing from the Tatra Mountains all the way to the Danube on the southern border. Probably the most dangerous section on the river were the two sharp and rocky meanders called Margita and Besná near the castle Strečno. Many rafters and boatmen found their deaths here, until the river transport of wood was made obsolete by the railway.

Graphic artists Josef Fischer and Wilhelm Friedrich Schlotterbeck created an epic aquatint, that presented the river and rocks in an almost fantastic fashion.

Orava is the northernmost and coldest region of the country. Its windswept hills, deep forests and hard-working pious populace inspired writers as well as artists.

Martin Benka was the founder of the nationally oriented painting, also called “the alchemist of Slovak beauty” by his contemporaries. Benka's goal was to provide the unassuming nation with spiritual support through art. His craft invoked many followers, albeit with less utopian and idealistic attitude.

Benka's monumental landscapes are often rythmicised by horizontal stripes of fog and populated by people at work and rest, proudly resisting their destiny. In his building of the "homeland myth", he used aspects of Art Nouveau and Expressionism, but also channelled the pathos and nostalgia of Romanticism.

The non-idealised, expressive and authentic visual style of Miloš Alexander Bazovský strived towards the spiritual core of the Slovak rural life. He examined the eternal principles behind life, work, home, struggle, humility, faith, memory and death.

After clash with dogmatic state power in the 1950's, he retreated to Orava, where his most poignant creative period started. Repeating motifs of lone houses, courtyards, farming tools, birds, cats, solitary figures and heavenly objects, the artist created an enigmatic world of solitude and passing from reality. Bazovský described the almost hallucinatory finale of his creation as – “half-surreal,” and “delirium colorans”.

Ľudovít Fulla was a harbinger of Slovak Modernism. Together with his colleague Mikuláš Galanda, he penned the first manifesto of Slovak Modernism, advocating for the originality of expression, personal investment in the subject matter and simplicity of form.

Fulla created a unique blend of disparate influences - children's art, medieval iconographic, European avant-garde painting and folk art. He innovated in many fields, including book illustration and stage design.

Fulla's largest paintings are often crowded, intensely colourful and full of small scenes, inviting the viewer for closer inspection. This winter vision of Žilina - the cultural and industrial hub of north-western Slovakia - is an exuberant celebration of snow and the communal life.

Liptov region lies below and to the west of the High Tatras and forms a spectacular collage of rounded hills, river canyons, plateaus and steep pastures.

The nature and inhabitants of Liptov were the subject matter for Martin Martinček, a very respected and versatile photographer. He spent considerable time talking to the people he wanted to photograph, earning their trust and getting to know their life stories.

Martinček searched for beauty in the people's faces, habitats, landscape structures and small random details of the natural order. His emotional panoramas of Liptov betray the deep affection for the land and its inhabitants.

Liptovská Mara is a water reservoir on the Váh, created between 1969 and 1975 to prevent floods and generate electricity. 13 villages were inundated during its creation and 940 families had to be resettled. Today, the dam is used as a recreational site. The reconstructed Celtic oppidum Havránok is situated on a hill above the dam.

Ladislav Čemický, sometimes called a father of Slovak watercolour painting, created many sentimental views of Liptov country throughout his long career, as they provided a relaxing retreat from more socially engaged and darker works. They ranged from timid mundane etudes to more impressionistic vistas.

Most of Nándor Katona's works depict scenes of nature from the land under the High Tatras, which he considered his home despite having spent much of his life in Budapest. He was influenced strongly by Ladislav Mednyánszky and adopted his master's propensity to depict fleeting atmospheres and states of light, his painterly gesture and reverence for the subject matter.

This intimidating view of massive High Tatras peak uses trees to show the smallness of man compared to the unstoppable geologic forces.

Arnold Peter Weisz-Kubínčan was an expressionist, tormented by internal unrest and search for identity for his whole life, which ended tragically in a Nazi concentration camp. Unsettling colour tensions and fluttering lines are palpable in his works, which powerfully demonstrate the hidden drama and an unseen rhythm of the landscape.

Kubínčan persistently depicted the strife for unity with nature and the desire for freedom, symbolised in one of his greatest works by the running (or flying) horse. Horses in motion are a repeating motif in Kubínčan's paintings and drawings, often in restless or defiant poses.

Janko Alexy was a socially active artist and culture essayist. His creative peak was in the 1930s, when he travelled with colleagues Bazovský and Palugyay through the uphill regions of Slovakia in search for subject matter and organised touring exhibitions promoting modern art. He created multiple pastel drawings with asymmetric composition and symbolic function of environments. To emphasise his ideas, he reduced the colour palette, used colder hues, simpler shapes and a soothing, fluent gesture.

One of his masterpieces is the image of fujara players in Detva, where he merged all token symbols of the iconic Slovak town - the local male skirt garments, shepherd's pipes and the characteristic funeral crosses.

Pavol Socháň was probably the most important Slovak photo-ethnographer, who documented the contemporary look of many Slovak cities and villages, folk costumes, embroidery, work tools and countryside dwellings. His attitude to motif selection, styling and composition is nearly encyclopaedic.

People in Socháň's photos perform their daily activities or interact with each other, but are shot from angles that emphasise their clothing, homes and surrounding landscape.

Banská Štiavnica is a well-preserved medieval town and a World Heritage Site. It lies in an ancient caldera created by a collapsed volcano. The town was a centre of silver ore mining and pioneered many innovations in the field (gunpowder blasts, water drain reservoirs known as tajchy, world's first technical university). After the decline of mining in the 19th century, Štiavnica stayed a university town and today is a popular tourist destination, thanks to its rich cultural heritage and interesting mine excursions.

An old litograph by an obscure Austro-Hungarian artist Hugo Löschinger shows many of the historical landmarks of Banská Štiavnica, including the Jesuit Calvary on the hill and the Klopačka Bell Tower, which was used to call miners for the mass.

The twisting medieval streets and various activities of citizens are also visible on Löschinger's veduta.

Ladislav Mednyánszky was the most iconic Impressionist working on Slovak territory. He lived for some time in Strážky mansion, within sight of the High Tatras and visually explored the surrounding countryside, especially the bends in the Poprad River nearby.

The melancholic qualities of this place were well-suited suited to his solitary character; he could wander for hours and study the changeability of nature, then bring it to life through hundreds of subtle brush strokes and color hues. Mednyánszky's intimate landscapes in lyrical realist style reflected each of his particular moods and feelings.

Documentary and surrealist photographer Tibor Honty also shot pictures of sculptures for galleries and art societies. His professional skills allowed him to capture conventional scenes in unusual compositions and juxtapositions.

In this panorama of Spiš country, we can see the three-plane sequence from old to recent - Spiš Castle from the 12th century in the background (one of the largest castles in Europe by area), the ecclesiastical town Spišská Kapitula in the middle and fields with packs of hay in the front. The nobility, the clergy, and the peasantry.

Ľudovít Čordák was born in Košice, but he lived in Munich and later in Prague, where he was following the traditional realism and romanticism trends of contemporary landscape painting. After returning to Eastern Slovakia and settling in Slanec, his art started to lighten up and incorporate more personal expression.

The new luministic attitude of Ľudovít Čordák's Slovak period is exemplified by the Moonlit Landscape with Castle Slanec, which despite being a traditional plen-air painting, feels somewhat enigmatic and out of time.

Anton Jasusch is best known for his set of giant apocalyptic canvasses, which contemplated the fate of humanity and channelled his traumas from the eastern front in the First World War. In addition to existential works, he also created many enchanting and inherently dynamic landscapes.

Deep woods in Bankov near Košice are a favourite local holiday destination, thanks to the "healing" waters and pristine nature close to the city. Jasusch painted the serpentine forest railroad in a gentle, relaxing manner, while still invoking feelings of mystery and a mild vertigo. The painting also seems to be saying farewell to the viewer.