Bedrich Hoffstädter — Landscape

Bedrich Hoffstädter was one of the members of 1909 Generation – he belonged to its Prague branch together with other artists from Slovakia who studied in Prague (Cyprián Majerník, Ján Želibský, Eugen Nevan). In the Bratislava branch it was mainly Ján Mudroch and Peter Matejka. The generation was also referred to as the conscience of the times, because unlike the older artists – the founders of Slovak modernism, such as Benka, Bazovský, Fulla and Galanda, who emphasised artistic expression tied to the reflection of national identity – this “new generation” preferred existential themes related to the economic crisis, the onset of fascism and the events of the Second World War. The second major iconographic line of the 1909 Generation were civilian themes, motifs of cafés, theatre, concerts, and urban and social life. 

It was Hoffstädter’s work that was characterised by civilian, city and urban themes, which the artist depicted only at the level of recording everyday events. His painting In the Tram, subtitled The Whisper (1943), is one of the iconic works of this line of interwar painting. However, he made his imprint on art history primarily as a documenter of sports and athletes with his dynamic figurative compositions (Basketball, 1945, Basketball Players, 1945, Wrestlers 1942, Before the Goal, 1942, Fencers, 1940-1945). 

At the end of the 1940s, the artist abandoned his civilian themes and devoted himself primarily to landscape painting. The painting Landscape from the collections of the Nitra Gallery dates from this period. The work belongs to a large group of watercolours, which mostly depict specific motifs – locations expressed in the title of the paintings (Prosiecka valley, Ďumbier, Rohačka, Choč z Liptova, V Zázrivej). Landscape differs from this set in that the title lacks specification and identification of the specific place it depicts. Nevertheless, we can say with certainty that this is the Slovak countryside, which has become the author’s lasting inspiration. He regularly visited Orava and Liptov from 1946. The figure is absent from his works and landscape painting became his exclusive interest. He tended towards it also in order to avoid first-plan building themes. Landscape painting in the 1950s has been described as an “escape theme” for those painters who wanted to avoid the orthodox themes of socialist realism.

Watercolour painting in smaller format Landscape depicts a natural landscape, the composition of which consists of three plans. In the first, the artist depicts cattle grazing on a grassy area, the second plan shows mountains and the third is finished with the sky. There is an interesting, one might say almost disproportionate, dynamic running through the picture. It moves from the flat, reduced shapes of the grassland and animals with a sketchy, distinctly relaxed hand, to the dramatic, more detailed rendering of the clouds, with an emphasis on the play with shadow, plasticity and the illusion of their depth. 

Bedrich Hoffstädter created and worked mostly in the first half of the 20th century and lived a relatively short life, tragically dying in an car accident at the age of 44. He was transporting his painting Liptovské hole (1951) from the Demänovská valley to an exhibition on the roof of his car; the painting has been preserved and is now in the collections of the National Gallery of Fine Arts. The work Landscape (1940-1950) also comes from the last period of the artist’s work. The painting was acquired by the Nitra Gallery in 1989.