Young Slovak Paintings

A number of foundations concentrating on the support of fine art have been lately created in Slovakia. Some of them support art more distinctly others exist more or less formally. One of the ones which started to get involved in intensive support of art is also the Foundation Young Painting. Its contribution – despite its establishment only in the last year – for the development of the young Slovak painting seems to be exceptionally important. The Young Painting Foundation differently than many others, uses only private finances, is not interested in its own advertisement and definitely not in profiting from collecting of artworks. Its aim is very simple – to help talented young painters with the faith, that through buying and presenting of their works the Foundation will help their future artistic creation, help them to persist on the often uneasy way and to get them into the conscience of specialists, the public, collectors or other art lovers. First time it supported the exhibition of Juraj Puchovský in the beginning of the year 2007 in the City Gallery of Bratislava in the Pálffy Palace, second large project is the exhibition of 15 young Slovak painters New Blood, in occasion of which is published also this publication.

Approximately in 6 months we picked many young artists. We met with about fifty and we chose fifteen for this project. Naturally, we realise the possible subjectivity of our view. Each curator or art collector would make his own choice and equally targeted exhibitions could have completely different character. We applied an age limit and tried to choose authors up to 35 years in whose works we have seen an attempt to prove something, where the painting was not only a cold calculation but a burning passion even though it could be represented also in a quiet, meditative expression. They were outrageously interesting meetings with many new and original artistic worlds, with New Blood. The ambition of this project was not and is not to determine winners or losers, but to contribute to the development of young artists. It is the reason why the Foundation Young Painting decided not to award prizes. From each author presented at this exhibition (until now with only one exception because of long-term stay of the author abroad) the Foundation Young Painting bought into its collections some paintings and in this way established a base of a collection oriented in this way. Of course, we realise that some can radically change the way of their painting, others will reach their peak later, next will stop with their artistic creation and will orientate onto something completely different. However the Foundation Young Painting wants to cooperate with these and other authors also in the future and gradually map their creation. It will be surely interesting from the point of view of the further development of the authors to look at this choice from a longer time distance and state how sensitive and right it was.

Why painting? Its repeated development practically in the whole world was possibly influenced by the tiredness from new media, often not very comprehensible artworks and finally the impossibility to have them classically “hung” at home. This considerably strong pressure of many collectors gradually started to show also on the art market. I could see the growing demand already clearly at the exhibition Armory Show in New York still at the beginning of the year 2003 where classical painting begun to take a much more important place in comparison to other media. Also our art scene reacted to this trend quite quickly. Already in May 2005 in Považská Gallery in Žilina Richard Gregor and Beáta Jablonská introduced a widely outlined exhibition Prievan (Draft), which contained artworks from more than 50 young Slovak painters and clearly documented the increased interest in painting also here in Slovakia. Its repetition took place in the State Gallery in Banská Bystrica, in the Gallery of the Capital Prague and in the Gallery of P.M. Bohúň in Liptovský Mikuláš. Not less important was also the Prize of the Foundation VÚB for painter’s creation for young artists under the title Painting 2006, which took place in the end of the stated year in the reconstructed spaces of the Clarisses’ Church. The jury chose here 20 authors, from which three were awarded.

It is not without interest, that in the area of painting in Slovakia do not establish any groups or associations with greater importance, like it was e.g. in the end of the 50s and beginning of the 60s of the 20th century, when with the new expansion of fine art was created also a number of groups. Just as well as at present we can not speak about any overruling trend, more pronouncedly assert themselves authors from concrete ateliers, mainly in Bratislava and Košice and already less in Banská Bystrica. We can find here attitudes in painting from abstract up to creation influenced by hyper-realistic tendencies. Often are reflected reactions on concrete private stories, dramatic events in the world or on the omnipresent consumption. Anyway, it is very varied and I hope, that also this exhibition, organised by the Foundation Young Painting in cooperation with the City Gallery of Bratislava will be a contribution to its further development.

I am very glad, that the Foundation Young Painting turned with its offer for cooperation right onto the City Gallery of Bratislava. It is right our gallery which systematically cooperates but also supports the youngest generation of Slovak artists. Many from today already renowned artists had their first individual exhibitions in its premises, in the years 2000 – 2005 here took place exhibitions of young art Prize for Young Artist of the Year Tonal, in the year 2001 it was renamed to the Oskár Čepan Prize. With that, of course, was related also an individual exhibition for the winner of this competition. From the year 2005 in the frame of the stipend for young curators the gallery offers its spaces also for exhibitions realised by still studying curators. All these projects had a considerable response and I believe that it will be the same also by this exhibition.

Ivan Jančár, curator/ director of Bratislava City Gallery