KLENOTY ČASU / Slovenská moderna zo súkromných zbierok

The term Slovak Modern, or more precisely the Modern of Slovakia, evokes in many viewers and art enthusiasts what might be called our most precious “family heirlooms.” Apart from the fact that, since their initiation, state and regional galleries have systemically focused on the acquisition of Slovak Modern Art, private collecting has also attracted several dedicated collectors and enthusiasts. Under the symbolic name Timeless Treasures, with the subtitle Slovak Modern from Private Collections, the exhibition at the ZOYA MUSEUM in Modra presents a range of masterful artworks from selected private galleries and collections. This exhibition presents a variety of famous and published artworks, as well as lesser-known or unpublished works from the most significant classical figures of Slovak Modern Art.

Slovak Modern refers to the visual art production that, from the beginning of the 20th century, reacted to Western European avant-garde and modern movements, seeking their specific appropriation and reinterpretation. “Domestication” of the model of Western culture—that is, modern and avant-garde movements as products of a highly individualized, industrialized society—within the Slovak context, which at the time was still a predominantly agrarian civilization, did not proceed in a straightforward, one-directional manner. Instead, a highly distinctive local “inflection” of European modern prototypes emerged. On the one hand, modernity in Slovakia constituted a significant multicultural and multinational phenomenon; on the other, it became a means and an expression of the search for national identity.

In Slovakia, new artistic stimuli emerged amid shifts and delays; many initiatives were solitary and individualistic, often lacking a more concentrated group or programmatic framework. The reason lay in the fact that authors and their works were rooted in their own time and space, as well as in the functions and roles that art fulfilled in the society of that period. Therefore, the term “l'art pour l'art” was almost unknown in Slovakia, despite attempts at defining art as an autonomous play of forms and creative freedom, which characteristically remained unfinished. In our country, art was always more than just art; most often, it was a struggle and a contest: for walking out of the shackles of historical anonymity, for the nation, for social justice, but also for the vision of the future and new ideals. Finally, art was a fight for itself, for the defence and affirmation of its right to exist as art.

This exhibition presents artworks, predominantly paintings, by the most significant representatives of the Modern from the early to mid-20th century, with several works extending into the 1960s. Visitors will see an unprecedented collection of works from the Košice Modern Movement, its predecessors, main representatives, and successors. The exhibition also features artists concerned with the position of the human being in the contemporary world and amid the historical cataclysms of the past century, as well as works by representatives of the so-called Generation of 1909 and the Second World War generation. The second part of the exhibition comprises works by painters of the so-called national orientation, who visualized the “life and myth of the native land.” This exhibition tells the gripping tale of Modern Art, in which Slovak artists reacted not only to contemporary European artistic movements but also often conveyed a distinctive message about the world they lived in.