Koloman Sokol 1968-1993

I am not interested in money, politics,
fame or comfortable life.
My aim has always been the life framed in purity.
Whether I will reach it? I do not know.
My life was cast of lead.
1968

The end of the sixties marked the beginning of the last creative phase in the oeuvre of Koloman Sokol, a significant figure of Slovak fine art whose artistic and humanistic legacy reached far beyond the borders of Slovakia. In this period, Sokol´s thinking and style significantly changed. He no longer aspired to a formal perfection, as if he lost interest in morphology, composition or space. He turned his attention to the atmosphere, the depiction of crucial moments and the state of mind. Eighteen works from the Nedbalka Gallery´s collection executed between 1968 and 1993 represent the selection of the artist´s best works from this creative period.

Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.

Koloman Sokol

Koloman Sokol was born in 1902 in Liptovský Mikuláš. He met Dr. Mathém, who started studying at the private school of Eugen Krone in Košice . Here he met for the first time with fine arts. Later he studied at the private school of Gustav Malý in Bratislava . He also studied art in Prague and in Paris . He received an offer from the Mexican Ministry of Culture and Education and left to study fine arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico , where he founded the Graphics Department. Although he achieved great success in Mexico. He moved to New York in 1941, because of the health of his wife, Lydia. After the war, he returned to Slovakia , but he had long since left his home in 1948 . He has been a member of the Union of Mexican Graphic Artists and has lived in Arizona for the last decade . At the end of his life, he gave 48 of his paintings to Slovakia, which later became the Foundation of the Koloman Sokol Center in Liptovsky Mikulas. He died 12.1.2003. In spite of his great success, he stayed until the end of his life with a modest man seeking his truth.

13. March 2019

Ladislav Mednyánszky – The 100th anniversary of artist´s death

Ladislav Mednyánszky (1852 Beckov – 1919 Viedeň) was one of the most significant painters at the turn of the twentieth century and the most famous Barbizon artist in Slovakia. During his lifetime he was recognised mainly as a landscapist. The Barbizon concept of landscape was in accordance with his inner world and he managed to bring the landscape painting in the manner of lyrical realism, which preferred the artist´s inner experience, individual feelings and moods, to the level of perfection.

11. December 2018