Ester Šimerová-Martinčeková, often called the first lady of the Slovak painting, was devoted to painting in which she was mainly familiar with the synthetic and late cubism of the 1910s and 1920s, but she also worked with scenic art, book illustration and poster. The prevailing motifs in her work are still-lives, figural compositions, landscape and nature.
The oil painting Still-life from 1984 belongs to the late period of her work, in which there is present the comeback of her favourite topics and expressive means of the 1930s influenced by her studies in Paris, the centre of the art world at that time. The key avant-garde style that she mastered, was for Šimerová-Martinčeková the French cubism and the artworks by artists as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris. More important than the motifs of mainly moderate, iconographic simple still-lives was for Šimerová-Martinčeková their painting style, analytical exploration of the possibilities of the painting, depicting the space, the effects and contrasts of the large colourful surfaces, compositional and perspective experimentation.
In the painting we can see a simple still-life with several bottles. Its colourity is moderate, showing real colour of the bottles with prevailingly earthy tones – brown, green and grey. The colours are texturized on large surfaces which at the same time create three dimensional relations. The bottles have intense black contours are placed in the space in Cubist way and portrayed from the various points of view. The painting has balanced composition and variety of colours, the lines of the bottles are in harmony with the sharp geometric shapes in the background. We can feel the sovereignty of the artist´s creative style tested by years of her work.
Ester Šimerová-Martinčeková (born Fridriková) was born in 1909 in Bratislava and died in Liptovský Mikuláš in 2005. As the only Slovak female artist she studied with the financial support of her father at the Académie Julien in Paris in 1927-29, at the Académie de l´art moderne (prof. Léger, Exterová, Marcoussis, Ozefant) in 1929-30, at Alexandra Exter private art school in Paris in 1930-32. In 1931 she exhibited in Prague where she was accepted as the member of the Art group. In 1932 she returned from Paris and resided in Bratislava, where she became a member of the Slovak art group. In 1939-43 she lived in Plzeň with her husband of Czech origin prof. MUDr. Šimera, who was arrested in 1942 for assistance in the assassination attempt at imperial protector Heydrich and he was executed in 1943. In 1943-45 she lived in Prague and after the WWII. she returned to Bratislava. In 1946 she became a member of th Group of Slovak artists of 29th August and became a chairperson of the Union of Slovak Artists. She was a member of the Slovak delegation at the first meeting of UNESCO in Paris, from 1949 member of The Central Union of Czechoslovak artists. In 1947 she got married to the lawyer Martin Martinček, at that time the chief of the presidium at the department of presidency of the Slovak National Council, who became later one of the most significant Slovak photographers. From 1951 they lived at Liptov, from 1954 until the end of her life in Liptovský Mikuláš. In 1966 she was awarded the Merited Artist title and her first monography was published. She is the awardee of many important awards. In 1991 she obtained T. G. Masaryk award Class IV, The Matica Slovenská foundation awarded her for her lifetime artwork the Miloš Bazovský Prize for visual art, in 2001 she accepted the highest French honours – the Golden award for her achievement on the field of art and literature and in 2002 she was awarded the Ľudovít Štúr Prize Class I.
— Omar Mirza
Inventory No.: O 1552
Artist: Ester Šimerová-Martinčeková
Title: Still-life
Year of origin: 1984
Technique: oil
Material: canvas
Dimensions: 39,5 × 28 cm
signature: unsigned