Ján Hlavatý Island in the soul

We invite you to the exhibition of Ján Hlavatý Island in the Soul in Danubiana. In the context of contemporary painting in Slovakia, the vivid abstract or broad-spectrum abstract work of Ján Hlavatý has a unique and specific place.

Despite the fact that painting trends in Slovakia in the second half of the 1980s were following the path of the so-called “new or wild painting”, Hlavatý was already taking his own path in the early 1980s.

The artist gradually develops his own distinctive way of expression, which is extremely extensive and cognitive. From delicate, almost transparent valleys, drawing brushstrokes, to nervous pasty strokes and splashes, from quiet poetic, even lyrical tones, to monumental symphonies of colour.

Colour is his basic statement and building material. In many cases it is built on experiencing the seen, groping the tangible and translating it through the interior, the mental into colouristic compositions. His expression not only draws on, but directly uses figurative elements as stimuli and essential starting points for a definitive compositional content. If we can find a specific sign in the artist’s paintings, if we can trace a certain figurative direction, we might lose it in the tangle of action, gestural brushstrokes in the very next painting.

Our “task” as viewers is not to search for concretising signs of figurative subtext in the given paintings, but to try to enter into the paintings of Ján Hlavatý.

He does not want to bind the composition to any specific content, on the contrary, he tries to make their message open to the widest possible range of interpretations, so that the viewer, when looking at them, is free to create associations according to his own imaginative disposition. In fact, Ján Hlavatý, with his expression of expressive abstraction, represents one of the most significant personalities of the contemporary Slovak art scene. The author’s sensitivity and humility before knowledge give the results on the pictorial surface the hallmark of truthfulness and emotional power of the statement.

He was born on 8 August 1955 in Zlaté Moravce. 1975 – 1981 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava under prof. Jan Želibský. He lives and works in Bratislava.

Exhibitions :

1984 – Foyer of the Medical Faculty of Charles University, Bratislava
1990 – Cyprián Majerník Gallery, Bratislava
1991 – Mitte Gallery, Vienna, Austria 1992 – State Gallery, Nitra
1995 – Slovak Cultural Institute, Budapest, Hungary
1998 – Forum de I Hôtel de Ville, Saint Louis, France
2003 – A1 Slapansky/Slapansky Gallery, Munich, Germany
2006 – OPE Gallery, Příbram, Czech Republic
2006 – State Gallery, Murská Sobota, Slovenia 2009 – SI Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic
2015 – Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Bratislava
2016 – Jan Koniarek Gallery, Trnava
2017 – Orava Gallery, Dolný Kubín
2023 – Umelka Gallery (Umelecká beseda slovenská), Bratislava

Location: Danubiana, Čunovo, Slovakia

Date: from 29.11.2024 – 02.02.2025

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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