Peter Uchnár illustrations

The Laputa exhibition is the culmination of the artist’s work dedicated to the tercentenary of Jonathan Swift’s fantasy novel Gulliver’s Travels. The works on display were created for the latest edition of the book (Slovart, 2023) from the author’s 1998 illustrations. More than fifty full-page paintings for the new edition were created from the original acrylic paintings using digital collage and newly painted sections. The format variety of the original illustrations, limiting previous editions, has been altered by the author’s interventions.

After the first incomplete edition (VSSS, 1998) and the aforementioned format inconsistency of the second edition (Reader’s Digest, 2008), the third edition marks the completion of this book project for the author. It includes works created and used for the author’s past Gulliver-themed exhibitions. In 2011, a three-dimensional enlargement of the illustration was created for the exhibition Magic world (Taipei -Taichung – Kaochung, Taiwan). This experience was developed for the exhibition Alone Against Lilliput (Bibiana, 2015), for which large-scale paintings combined with spatial objects were created. Parts of these paintings were used for the cover of the new book.

A third independent resource that was involved in the latest edition of the book is the large-scale digital collage project Laputa. This was created after the artist’s experience in creating an animated film for the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival.

Experimenting with the details of the backgrounds created for the film, combined with newly painted parts, the author realized six versions of this image in succession. For this exhibition, a version from 2024, created for the Municipal Library in Bratislava, has been loaned.

Juraj Žembera

Biography

Peter Uchnár (1970) is one of the most successful Slovak illustrators of the last decades. Already for his debut Gulliver’s Travels, he was awarded the Golden Apple of the BIB 1999 as a fresh graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, and he was the only one in the history of the BIB to be awarded the Children’s Jury Prize twice (2009 and 2017). Among the most famous titles he illustrated are Kristínka a svet fantázie, The Big Book of Slovak Fairy Tales and Peter Pan. In addition to fairy tales, folktales and fantasy stories, he has also illustrated poetry and prose for adults. He has exhibited his work in Copenhagen, Jakarta, Warsaw, Taipei, Bologna, Tokyo and many other cities at home and abroad. In 2017 and 2021, he also successfully exhibited in Danubiana.

Location: Danubiana, Čunovo, Slovakia

Date: from 03.09.2024 – 09.02.2025

Opening hours:

Monday – closed
Tuesday – Sunday
from 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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