Restored works from the collection of the Central Slovakian Gallery
Artists: Július Flache, Edmund Gwerk, Viliam Ruttkay-Nedecký
Restorer: Miroslav Slúka
Curator: Zuzana L. Majlingová
Video: Jakub Julény
July 4, 2018 – September 30, 2018
One of the ambitions of the Central Slovakian Gallery in Banská Bystrica is the systematic presentation of the works of art, which are a permanent part of its rich collections. Within the annual dramaturgical edition of The Restored Works, the gallery focuses on introducing lesser-known works from its collection, which for a long time are not exposed due to damage and bad condition and are therefore less well known to the public. Or, on the contrary: these works were borrowed in permanent exhibitions of partner galleries that, due to their age and long-term presentations, require acute treatment. The curatorial selection of works for annual restorative care also takes into account their subsequent appreciation through an exhibition on the home gallery ground and is specified either as a thematic or an author selection collection.
This year, we have included a collection of 54 paintings by three painters of the interwar modernism: Julius Flache (1892-1967), Edmund Gwerk (1895-1956) and Viliam Ruttkay-Nedecký(1892-1967). The exhibition of restored works captures the period of their early work after graduating from academic studies, from the 20s of the twentieth century to the peak of the work, created at the turn of the third decade until the war years. The observed period represents the formative development of their painting program initially influenced by training to the creation of their authentic author style. We do not structure the presentation chronologically, but according to the genres that corresponded with the natural contemporary interest of artists – landscape, social motive, intimate nooks of city vedutas and favorite environments, portraits and acts. In the thematic units and mutual comparisons of related motives, the stylistic features of the paintings of generationally close artists operating in the Banská Bystrica region (Július Flache, Viliam Ruttkay-Nedecký) and Banská Štiavnica (Edmund Gwerk) are more distinctive. All three authors belong due to art-historical writings to the reflected, but to date insufficiently appreciated undiscovered artists of the sensual trend of interwar modernism. In the early works, they started from the tradition of Central European Secession, Symbolism and Secession Impressionism. The peak work of E. Gwerk and J. Flache is already characterized by well-defined, monumentalized forms of figurative genre expressionism, to which also V. Ruttkay-Nedecký, a more subtle painter, by a part of his work from this period experimentally inclined.
Zuzana L. Majlingová
Supported by Slovak Arts Council.