opening: 14. 9. 2017, 18.00
duration: 15. 9. – 19. 11. 2017
curator: Peter Markovič
Východoslovenská galéria, Hlavná 27
Painter, graphic artist and draftsman Alexander Eckerdt is an important figure in Slovak fine art of the second half of the 20th century. In the years 1952-1958 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava at the Department of Book Graphics and Illustration prof. Vincent Hložník. Eckerdt very he almost abandoned the formal features of Hložník's graphic school. Already the early non-dogmatic work of the artist, in the beginnings of the search for his own artistic program from the end of the fifties, significantly tended to the values of European and Czech artistic modernity. In his graphic, painting and drawing work, he focused mainly on the legal theme and the landscape.
Eckerdt's painting work is characterized by the typical economy of applied artistic means, coloristic restraint and a strong artistic abbreviation, showing a significant effort for shape absolutization and inclination to the decorative values of artistic expression. The author with a lyrical-poetic vision of the motives of his work thematically focused mainly on civilian themes, influenced by the values of the urban environment, the recreational theme of sport, later the motives of love and especially the constantly present theme of the female nude.
Alexander Eckerdt belonged to a few Slovak graphic artists, systematically working with the classical technique of lithography. His ascetic and linearly pure graphic and drawing work, despite a significant degree of artistic perfectionism, remained "Eckerdt" and did not represent a characteristic line of meticulous and elaborate detail of Slovak graphic art and in the period after the mid-seventies represented a very special relationship to imaginative and imaginative. line as the dominant tendency of contemporary art. From the end of his studies until his death, he worked in Košice and today he represents one of the most important Košice visual and artistic personalities of the last century.
The author's exhibition is ready for the 25th anniversary of the artist's death. In an retrospective way, the exhibition recalls the artist's lifelong painting, drawing and graphic work, from his early works to works from the late and recent period. Eckerdt, tenaciously searching for his own artistic language, has defined himself from the beginning of his work to the contemporary socialist-realistic aesthetics, and we find in him an interrupted continuity with modern European fine art. Eckerdt's work is one of the purest and most consistent artistic models of Slovak fine art in the second half of the 20th century.
The exhibition was prepared in cooperation with the East Slovak Gallery and the Alexander Eckerdt Small Gallery, the Šariš Gallery and private collectors.
