Artwork of the month:
Lucia Žitnayová — Flaking

There are several reasons why the Nitra Gallery decided to purchase a series of watercolours by the young Slovak artist Lucia Žitnayová for its collections.

With the acquisition, the gallery has boosted its collection of drawings, which is generally under-represented, by the representation of female artists. Further, the purchase partially reflected the scholarly exhibition activity in the Youth Gallery space, where this artist had her solo exhibition LACUS in the fall of 2023, and this series was part of the presented collection of Žitnayová’s work. The fact that the author comes from the Nitra region (Malé Zálužie) is also not insignificant. 

With a certain amount of “exaggeration” we could say that her previous artistic orientation on themes related to water management in her birthplace also unintentionally complement the “agrarian” character of a large part of the Nitra Gallery’s collections – and in a contemporary visual language.

Lucia Žitnayová’s entry onto the scene, but also her imaginary entry into the collection of the Nitra Gallery, expands the portfolio of female artists who are also related to organic forms of sculpture, installations and drawings. (The domestic environment is familiar with generationally older artists resonating on the scene, such as Mária Bartuszová, Denisa Lehocká). Žitnayová has a particular feeling for volume and mass, with which she works, although she studied painting. The element of water, natural materials, stones, mud, fishing nets, fish. The series of six watercolours is also inspired by the aquatic world. In lyrical-decorative watercolor blue-white-gray and black patches, she abstracts and romanticizes particular details found in the space of the pond. The fascination with this space, where the artist grew up, is fundamental. The pond with a fish farm was built in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the regulation of the Radošinka stream at its confluence with the Galanovský brook between Malé Zálužie and Kapince. 

The purchase of the acquisition was financially supported by the Nitra Self-Governing Region.