The current exhibition "Slovak Story in Prague" follows the previous exhibition events of the Lomnica Gallery, which in various contexts explored the authorial and genre forms of Slovak art modernism of the interwar period, as well as its successors from the circle of the Galanda Group. To "The Slovak Story in Painting" and "The Story of Slovak Landscape Painting" we now add "The Slovak Story in Prague". 

What should a visitor imagine under this name? 

Slovak fine art of the 20th century was not created in a vacuum. From the Upper Hungarian context (tied to the stimuli of art academies in Budapest, Vienna, Munich and Paris), the key figures of Ladislav Medňanský and Dominik Skutecký stand at the beginning of our artistic modernism. Finally, their works are representatively documented in the social spaces of the Hotel Lomnica, so that the visitor can perceive them contextually. 

 However, the exhibition "Slovak Story in Prague" has other ambitions. To show, through the most important personalities of our painting modernism – the Classics, Generation 1909 and Generation 1919 – the developmental profile from a realistic approach to modern directions and influences (whether it is Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Surrealism), although they have never taken an orthodox form in our cultural environment. Formal absolutism has always been opposed by national, ethnological, spiritual and poetic roles.

But why do we find Prague in the title of the exhibition?

When designing the exhibition, this aspect seemed very important to us. If we forget the modest tradition of private art education (G. Mallý in Bratislava, E. Krón in Košice), in Slovakia until 1939 (the establishment of the Department of Drawing and Painting of the SVŠT), the university formation of visual artists was completely absent. From Gustáv Mallý, Martin Benko, Miloš A. Bazovský and Janko Alexy, Imr Weiner – Kráľ, Edmund Gwerk to Generation 1909 (Conscience of Time), documented by Cyprián Majerník and Peter Matejko, and then in the younger generation around Vincent Hložník - one of the excellent study alternatives was just Prague. There they found a strong cultural background, contact with Czech modernism (Osma, Tvrdošijní), with cubism (private collection of Dr. Kramář), but especially with a number of exceptional pedagogical personalities at the Academy of Fine Arts (established in 1799) and at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (established in 1885). 

The study of Slovak artists at Prague schools of fine arts and their exhibition activities in the former interwar Czechoslovakia well complement the tradition of Slovak culture in Prague (let us recall the meritorious work of the Detvan association, the Edition of Young Slovak Authors, published by Mazáč's publishing house, as well as the review Elán under the leadership of Ján Smrek). 

All this awaits the visitor with a new exposition, who will become an eyewitness to how Slovak painting gradually moved from folkloristic nests to a more universal humanistic home.