Zoltán Palugyay: From Church, 1932
The systematically developed Collection of Twentieth Century Art reaches beyond the year 2000 and has several basic lines of scope. The collection focuses on monitoring styles, tendencies and partial trends, tracing the most significant protagonists through their major works. In this way the main stylistic landmarks of Slovak Modernism are presented, reaching up to the 1960s. The second line documents the development of visual artists: each collection presents the artist through the most important works, ranging from samples of early production to the peak period. The third area is connected with the nature of the city gallery and therefore part of the collection is dedicated to the theme of Bratislava, its depictions in the course of decades, focusing on historic events and portraits of leading personalities in the fields of politics, society and culture.
The most consistent part of the collection of twentieth century art consists of works of art from the years 1900-1970. It includes a representative collection of works of Slovak as well as Hungarian artists living in Slovakia (until the year 1918) with a shift to the first major response to Modernism in Slovakia (Fulla, Bazovský, Alexy, Palugyay, Jakoby, Weiner-Kráľ, Jasusch, Šimerová and others). The works created during the Second World War and in the first phase of the so-called Socialist Realism (from today's perspective they are of documentary value) are also represented in this collection. Another aspect of the collection focuses on the works of individual artists (Jakoby, Uher, Paštéka, Jankovič, Čunderlík and others) and groups (Mikuláš Galanda Group, 29th August Group of Artists and others) from 1957 to the mid-1960s. The works of the aforementioned groups are continuously complemented - tracing the artistic production of the aforementioned artists along with the emerging generation up to the present. The most recent acquisition policy (since 2002) focuses on the establishment of an independent collection of "other media". The development of this collection began with the acquisitions of early works by the protagonists of Conceptual art in Slovakia (from 1964 to the 1970s). Its core is formed by the works of Koller, Bartoš, Filko, Sikora, Mlynárčik, Laky, Ďurček and other artists.
Our ambition is to complete the collection with contemporary works, recognised by art historians, in order to maintain continuity of the entire collection. Our aim is to complement the collection with works from previous periods and thus create an overall picture of twentieth century art.
Curator: Mgr. Zsófia Kiss - Széman Zoltán
