World Synthesis / At Right Angles

The selected works in various media, ranging in date from the early 20th century to the present day, reflect upon the tendencies of geometric abstraction as one of the most important aspects of fine art a testify to the ongoing search for compositional principles through geometry. The exhibition presents the work of more than twenty artists from the Gallery’s collection in dialogue with those of invited artists from Slovakia and abroad (SK, CZ, HU, ES, PL). The exhibition is presented as part of the Collection in Dialogue dramaturgical cycle of exhibitions. The project is supported with public funds by the Slovak Art Council.  

Artists from the Gallery’s collection: Marek Brincko, Janusz Jerzy Cywicki (PL), Terezija Fedorivna Čuvalova (UA), Orest Dubay, Vlado Eliáš, Eva Fišerová, Jozef Haščák, Rudolf Hofer, Ferdinand Katona, Richard Kitta, Otto Korkoš, Martin Kudla, Alexander Olszewski (PL), Štefan Oravec, Jose Picazo (ES), Peter Roller, Peter Rónai, Jozef Sedlák, Rudolf Sikora, Imrich Svitana, Simona Štulerová, Monika Vrancová

Invited artists: Imre Bak (HU), Viktor Hulík (SK), Mark Starel (PL), Markéta Váradiová (CZ), Mar Vicente (ES)

The title of the exhibition, World Synthesis – At Right Angles, reflects upon the concept of a world visualized through geometry. An exploration of geometric trends in modern and contemporary art, the show focuses not only on “pure” abstraction but expands its horizons to encompass works in which geometric forms and structures form an integral part of the visual language. The search for geometry in nature, architecture or still lifes grants the works a synthesis of form and colour and allows the emergence of novel compositional arrangements. The gradual refinement of the visible into basic geometric forms can facilitate the bridging of the gap between subjective perception and more universal principles of the world.

The earliest examples of abstract art in Slovakia appeared in a somewhat sporadic manner throughout the first half of the 20^th century, primarily in the work of several specific artists such as Ľudovít Fulla and Mikuláš Galanda in the period of their magazine Sukromné Listy [Private Letters] from 1930 to 1932 which had analogies to the Dessau Bauhaus movement. These promising developments were disrupted by the rise of the socialist regime which enshrined socialist realism as the only acceptable artistic trend. Nonetheless, expressive (mainly in informal terms) and constructivist tendencies began to appear in Slovak art almost simultaneously in the late 1950s and early 1960s., and we can observe an accumulation of solutions to the issues posed by Modernism and Abstactionism but also a contradiction of questions related to the national tradition which ultimately culminated in an inclination towards the traditions of the Galanda model. The genesis and subsequent development of geometric tendencies in Slovak art can be understood as part of the urban culture emerging in the 1960s which was associated with the ideas of engineering the world, programmable behaviour and utopian visions. These contexts gave rise to so-called “cold geometry”, an industrial rational-constructivist approach which was later superceded by the more intuitive, lyrical and metaphysical forms of geometry prevalent in the 1980s. Current trends in geometry see the approach as forming part of a postmodern language, opening up new inspiration and integrating conceptual ideas or intermedial interventions.

Mgr. art. Katarína Balúnová, ArtD., exhibition curator