Peter Bartoš — ZOO — a Continuous Landscape Concept

Peter Bartoš is considered to be one of the leading figures of Slovak conceptual art. Although he had studied painting at the beginning of his artistic career, in 1965 he parted from painting as a medium. He organized an event called “Giving Away” (Rozdávanie), which was one of the first manifestations of action art in Slovakia. He gave the works he had created so far to his colleagues and friends and created thus “a blank platform for different creativity.” [1] His artistic interest focused on matter, its properties and behavior, how he can work with it, its physical qualities such as concentration or diffusion. By the end of the 1960s he moves to conceptual text references, drafts, and drawings. In addition to action and conceptual art he starts to be interested in land-art and zoo-art and he devotes his creative attention to several characteristic themes such as pigeons (for example the project of breeding the “Bratislava Esthetic Pigeon”, for which he won a breeder award in 1976), or an open, longtime project of topographic painting notes of particular areas of landscapes and city views (for example, in the Bratislava under-castle-area, natural forest parks, ZOO), where he critically comments on contemporary situation, suggesting new solutions and developing universal, often ideological messages. These multilayered works respond to various ecological problems in terms of meaning and form, they invite to protect natural and historical monuments, they encourage the preservation and re-cultivation of landscape, criticize developers and their insensitive interventions into the urban environment of Bratislava.

The work ZOO –a Continuous Landscape Concept (ZOO – pokračujúci koncept krajiny) belongs to the longtime topographical cycles. The theme of Bratislava Zoological Garden is familiar and close to the artist because he worked there for a number of years. The drawing presents the artist’s proposal on how to finish the landscape and architecture environment of the ZOO based on the current situation and offers a solution on how to situate animal runs, to structure building elements and use the space for free time activities. Such work, transformation and cultivation of land in terms of concepts, offers the author almost unlimited space to map his own ideas – Bartoš is thus a “cartographer of ideas and images.” [2] Bartoš offers real, specific and feasible solutions and improvements; therefore this work is not only a reflection of idealized imagination.

Lucia Gregorová-Stachová writes about Bartoš’s landscape projects: “His works from the mid 1970s build on several drawings of landscape profile sections that are more a meditation considering the spiritual aspects of a certain natural framework. This part of his work bears affinities with the art of Japanese gardens where each little thing, each plant, water stream, ascending or descending terrain, is firmly grounded in the system that is built upon the basis of certain spiritual order. This tendency finds its full manifestation in his future ecological and landscape art activity that he developed in the 1970s in a number of projects (Ecological Solutions in the Area of Podháj in Lamač, Bratislava, 1972; Ecological Solutions in the City, 1978). In the specific form his projects deal with effective ecological revitalization of several parts of Slovakia. His interest found the full accomplishment in the design of changes in the Bratislava ZOO (1978 -1987), where he had worked. His projects are significant both from the perspective of architecture and aesthetics, since they are excellent drawing renditions, although he himself denies this ascetically.” [3]