An encounter with the work of Igor Hudcovič (1949–1995) will not leave one indifferent. At first glance, it sparks your interest, strikes you, imprints itself into your mind, and becomes a part of your own world. It amazes how someone could grasp so clearly what the rest of us mostly only intuitively suspect. With transient concentration, he precisely and effortlessly conveys an idea, a story, or a metaphor of life in a single stroke. This ability had been refined by his work as a graphic and poster designer, which necessitated his clarity of expression.
His drawings look natural and inevitable. They touch the essence, pose fundamental questions, and hit the bull’s-eye. Hudcovič speaks through archetypal shapes and signs such as the sphere, circle, triangle, cube, spiral, apple, table, house, animal, plant, and figure, which we seem to have known intimately for a long time because they contain a part of our own questions, dilemmas, and searches. Crucially, these archetypal shapes also encompass the sacred, the humorous, the ironic, and the paradoxical in life. In Hudcovič’s drawings, the true essence of existence is palpably evident.
However, there is also the toying with the fundamental core and the essential matter of things, which he gradually revealed with each stroke, making it tangible and real while incorporating his authentic cyphers into the work. In his case, thinking in categories of figuration or abstraction becomes unfounded. Both positions are present in his work as part of one compact language, which is similar to the language of his collaborators Vladimír Popovič (1939), Otis Laubert (1946), and Igor Kalný (1957–1987), who are all featured as guest artists of this exhibition. The author’s drawings were brought to life through animation by Daniela Krajčová (1983).
If we consider drawing as the primary medium for recording an idea, then in the case of Igor Hudcovič, it conveys his thinking flawlessly and definitively without the need to elaborate through another medium. He uses it to record ideas that flow like an endless series of individual frames of hundreds of intimate drawings, from which he creates certain leporellos, composed of larger bodies of work and stories with an open ending. Alongside his black and white ink drawings, abstract pastel drawings with refined colours and the energy of a well-thought-out yet spontaneous approach emerge on coloured paper backgrounds.
Igor Hudcovič’s artworks reflect his personal story. They were created between 1986 and 1995 in the prolific solitude of a country house in Malachov, near Banská Bystrica, and influenced by his illness. The hardship brought about by Hudcovič’s poor health also, quite significantly for his work, presented him with a new perspective. An illness gradually frees a person from the banalities of life, distances him, and allows him to concentrate and sense the essence of things. Vladimír Popovič aptly remarked that “The interest in Igor grows with the number of people who have seen or will see his things.” We also have the chance to experience the adventure of drawing and explore its expressive possibilities in the creative zones of the exhibition.
— Daniela Čarná, Martina Martincová
Igor Hudcovič (1949, Bratislava – 1995, Banská Bystrica) studied at the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Bratislava under Prof. Rudolf Fila. From 1968 to 1974, he worked as a graphic designer and visual artist at the Regional Gallery, the Central Slovak Publishing House, and the J. G. Tajovský Theatre in Banská Bystrica. He became a freelance graphic designer and artist focusing on drawing and painting in 1974.
He regularly exhibited (e.g. 1978: International Poster Biennale, Warsaw; 1985: Theatre and Poster, Bratislava City Gallery, Bratislava; 1989: Painting, Drawing, Central Slovak Gallery, Banská Bystrica; 1992: Drawing, The SSAA Gallery Palisády, Bratislava; 1992: Czech and Slovak Drawing, The Museum of Art Žilina; 1996: I. H. In memoriam, Museum of V. Löffler, Košice; 2005: I. H., Drawing, Painting, Central Slovak Gallery, Banská Bystrica; 2022: Drawings, Gallery 19, Bratislava). His work is represented in the collections of the Central Slovak Gallery in Banská Bystrica, the Museum of Art Žilina, and the Novohrad Gallery in Lučenec, and mapped in the monograph Igor Hudcovič in Drawing, Painting, Word. Žilina: Mediana, 2008, graphic design by Pavel Choma.
The project was realized with the financial support of the Banská Bystrica Self-Governing Region.
The founder of the Central Slovak Gallery is the Banská Bystrica Self-Governing Region.
