The World of Karol Baron

Baron’s pastels, drawings, paintings, screen prints, cutouts, objects and large-format installations are known for radiating black humour, grotesque, soft inner laughter, but also sarcasm and ironies of everyday life. What would happen if the beings from Baron’s works started talking to us? What would happen if they pulled us into their images? What stories would they have to tell? What could we experience with them? Would it be like a surrealistic dream or, on the contrary, like any other ordinary day? 

The World of Karol Baron is the first educational exhibition prepared by Nitra Gallery for students of primary and secondary schools as a part of this year’s project Art for Schools at Nitra Gallery. The gallery has allowed access to 13 works and one bibliophilia from its collection. The exhibition is accompanied by various interactive tasks and elements. Simultaneously, the gallery will be holding a multi-month series of workshops and educational programs focused on interpreting works and objects from the gallery collection, including creative activities for visitors. The educational part of the project will culminate in December in the form of the final exhibition of works created by the participants of the educational programs. 

Two anniversaries in one year. The academic painter and professor Karol Baron was born on September 13, 1939 in Levoča. Between 1963 – 1969, he studied at AFAD in Bratislava at a studio led by prof. Dezider Milly and Peter Matejka at the Department of Liberal Painting and Tapestry. Since the early 1970s, his work was influenced by the Czechoslovak Surrealist Group as he was one of its members. Baron’s pastels, drawings, paintings, screen prints, cutouts, objects and large-format installations are known for radiating black humour, grotesque, soft inner laughter, but also sarcasm and ironies of everyday life. They are full of metamorphoses and paraphrases. Since 1967, we have been able to admire his inimitable work at more than 40 solo exhibitions and at least 110 collective exhibitions not just in Slovakia, but also in Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Japan, the US… His work enriched Slovak modern art of the second half of the 20th century and made him an irreplaceable part of our artistic culture. Several of his works have become a part of the collection fund of numerous national galleries in Slovakia and also some foreign galleries (the US, France, Great Britain). They can be also found in both Slovak and foreign private collections. His works have been referenced in important Slovak and international dictionaries, encyclopaedias, publications and magazines focused on surrealism and neo-surrealism. 

Between 1995 – 2004, he worked as a university lecturer at the Department of Creative Arts and Art Education at Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra.

This year marks two important anniversaries related to the artist Karol Baron. In February, it was twenty years since his tragic accident on February 29, 2004 when he succumbed to his injuries after being hit by a car on a street in Paris. He had travelled to Paris in order to open his dream exhibition at a private gallery Les Yeux Fertiles. The second anniversary will be in September. On September 13, Karol Baron would celebrate his 85th birthday.