František Hübel — Citadel of Civilisation

Art and its history can sometimes easily and unfairly forget or not even notice. It has been the case of a painter, printmaker and illustrator František Hübel. “Today, it is a rare thing to discover unknown artworks after the painter’s death. František Hübel was a talented artist, best known for his figural compositions and illustrations of books for children and youth.” (Ľ. Belohradská – E. Trojanová). After the artist’s passing, a collection of previously unknown artworks have been found in his studio. They were diametrically different from the ones he had been known for and consisted mostly of wonderful paintings that were based on geometric abstraction. The Nitra Gallery’s collection contains a print of a smaller format that was created four years after his graduation. The black and white image focuses on a stylised face / a portrait – a painful metaphor (of a Citadel of Civilisation) that raises a lot of unspoken existential questions about us, our dreams and desires, our desperation and suffering. A face lying in a meadow, in the grass is also a face lying in thorns or needles. It is a face that is both resting and hurting at the same time. With time, the piece clearly features the sorrow and quiet depressions of its author…

The Bastion of Civilisation is a piece of his work that “contains hundreds of images, painted on paper in tempera or aquarelles or black and white drawings. It was not just the artist’s way of creating his own language, but a search for the meaning of life that must have been put above the depressing reality he had to deal with. And it led him to discover new textural relations, art forms and colours in both surface and spacial art.” (Ľ. Belohradská – E. Trojanová)