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Viera Kraicová – Paintings 1962 – 1994

The picture must paint itself... Come up to the surface like groundwater.

Viera Kraicová

The monographic exhibition “Viera Kraicová: Paintings 1962–1994” presents works by this extraordinary painter and illustrator included in the Nedbalka Gallery´s collection. It provides an overview of her body of work from the early 1960s up to the mid-1990s, with the emphasis on paintings from the turn of the sixth and seventh decade. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue put her artistic development into the context of political, institutional, and gender specifics of former Czechoslovakia. They examine Kraicová´s entrance on the art scene, and her ground-breaking performance as a member of the first women-only art group in Slovakia – Group 4 (1958–1966, together with Oľga Bartošíková, Jarmila Čihánková and Tamara Klimová).

The exhibition presents the artist´s painting experiments hovering on the border of abstraction and figuration, her spontaneous gestural paintings, imaginative figurative works and returns to colour patch as a crucial means of expression and intermediary of emotional expression. There are also represented classical genres like still life or portrait as well as records of the artist´s spontaneous painting that, in a way, always followed the contours of a figural basis. The exhibition covers a broad range of painter´s work that remains easily recognisable despite being permanently updated and rediscovered. Never really transcending the boundaries of a classical painting, Kraicová kept expressing her feelings and ideas on the canvas or paper.

Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.

Viera Kraicová

Viera Kraicová the first lady of Slovak fine art, the painter of a spontaneous imagination or the painter with a star in the eye – these are the vocal epithets underlining the unique position of this artist in the history of twentieth-century Slovak art as well as the specific qualities of her works. Apart from painting, she also focused on illustration and monumental designs. Her life and work, just like the life and work of her contemporaries, were closely linked with turbulent events and political changes of the twentieth century, which had a significant impact on art and art institutions. In her searching for new ways of painting, she was more or less directly influenced by the possibilities of studying, travelling, establishing contacts with foreign artists, or establishing and joining art associations, as well as by the gender inequalities and various degrees of official censorship.

Viera Kraicová (5 July 1920, Modra – 29 April 2012, Bratislava) was a key representative of Slovak painting and illustration. After studying at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Department of Drawing and Painting (1940–1944), and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (1945–1950), she worked as an assistant to her former university teacher, Ján Želibský, at Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava (1952 – 1955). In 1955, she started working as a free-lance artist and won many awards for both her paintings and illustrations.

 

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Address

  • Galéria Nedbalka, n. o.
    Nedbalova ulica 17
    811 01 Bratislava
    tel.: +421 2 20 76 60 31

Opening hours

  • Open daily
  • except Mondays
  • 13.00 – 19.00
  • Open