Dušan Kállay Magical World

Dušan Kállay has been active on the artistic scene for over fifty years. His work has grown over that time and has inspired almost all artistic fields. The defining criterion of his efforts is his extraordinary talent, great drawing skills and incredibly intense and persistent work.

His curiosity and thirst for knowledge motivated him to penetrate the mysteries of life and nature and led him to a deeper study of their workings. His interests bordered almost on a scientific approach and analysis of the problems that interested him.

Thus, his work deflates a hybrid world of animal and mechanical forms, whose shapes are perfectly rendered realistically, and together create a fictional magical world. The fascination with the natural world reveals new structures, invisible to us, on whose knowledge and functioning our lives depend.

Although Dušan Kállay relies on reality, his aim is not the representation itself, but the search for new connections, a process of discovery that never ends. His prints, drawings, paintings and other works are suggestive in their language and convince the viewer that miracles do happen. The feelings of wonder inherent in all areas of his work could be achieved through a combination of rational thought and knowledge, and the ability to transpose them into new pictorial imagery.

The pictorial compositions are invariably complex, composed throughout, often with inscribed explanatory notes in the margins that gloss the motif in “scientific” language. The prevailing themes and motifs, towers, nests, weathervanes, tributes to personalities, caryatids, mazes, horsemen, are in Kállay’s conception symbols of human virtues and vices, often with a relation to ancient culture and philosophy. Their representation, however, does not attack the viewer, but has a culture of hyperbolic pictorial metaphor. The exhibition presents a profile selection of paintings, prints, drawings and a recent illustrative opus.

Biography:

Dušan Kállay was born in 1948 in Bratislava. From 1969 to 1972 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava (prof. J. Želibský, prof. V. Hložník). From 1990 to 2018 he worked as a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, since 1994 as a professor. He actively participated in international workshops, seminars and lectures. He works in the field of graphic art, drawing, illustration, painting, poster and stamp design and cartoon film. He has created hundreds of graphics and drawings, nearly two hundred illustrated opuses, dozens of stamp designs, and collaborated on two animated films. He has collaborated with foreign publishers such as Albertiner Verlag Berlin, Shinkosa Tokyo, Grimm Press Taipei, Fukuinkan Shoten Publ. Tokyo, Bohem Oress Zürich, Otto Maier Verlag Ravensburg, Grund Paris, among others. The most important is the Hans Christian Andersen Award 1988, two Golden Apples BIB´73 and BIB´75, 2002 Grand Prix Most Beuatiful Stamp of the World WIPA, Wien, 2011 Grand Prix de l´Art Philatelique, Bruxelles, 2015 Grand Prix Alice 150, The, Grolier Club, N.Y., etc., etc. Together with his wife Kamila Štanclova they have prepared dozens of solo exhibitions both at home and abroad.

Venue: Danubiana, Čunovo, Slovakia
Date: from 05.09.2023 – 15.10.2023
Opening hours: 10:00 – 18:00
Admission:
Adults – 10 €
Family (2 adults and 2 students) – 20 €
Pensioners (over 62 years old) – 5 €
Students – 5 €
Children (under 6 years old) – Free
Danubiana Club Members – Free
Disabled persons, persons over 75 years of age – Free

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