Martin Benka — From Lanžhot

Martin Benka is considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century, the founder of modern Slovak art and the author of a distinctive national artistic style, which was characterised by its specific features. That involved mythicizing, heroizing and idealizing the Slovak man and the Slovak landscape, which he demonstrated in pictorial compositions dominated by hilly, mountainous landscapes with figures of strong, resilient, heroic men and women working and living in harsh conditions. He thus created a monumental, magnificent painting with a nation-building idea with a characteristic pathos and romanticism, in which he celebrated the simple life of rural people in order to strengthen the self-confidence of Slovaks. This characteristic is particularly typical of his peak work from the 1920s and 1930s.

The smaller format of the oil painting From Lanžhot (1916 – 1917) comes from Benka’s early work, from a period when there was still no indication that he would become a myth-maker of Slovak man and nature through his paintings. It is a paradox that he first visited the Slovak mountain landscapes, which later became his inspiration, only in 1913 (further trips followed after 1918); until then, he was not very familiar with this area of Slovakia. Despite the fact that he was born in Slovakia, in the Záhorie region, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he had a very close relationship with southeastern Moravia (he trained as a painter-decorator in Hodonín and exhibited with the Association of Moravian Artists), and later with Prague, where he studied and lived until 1939. He was not known in Slovakia until 1918, he did not take part in the domestic art scene, his first exhibition was in 1920 within the Association of Slovak Artists.

The landscape motif of the presented work comes from Moravia, from the vicinity of the town of Lanžhot (today the district of Břeclav in the South Moravian Region). For example, Benka’s study for the interior of the Slovak Room, which was part of a smaller cycle of interior paintings, was also created in Lanžhot. The field trips organised by Alois Kalvoda for the students of his private landscape painting school in Prague, which Benka attended between 1909 and 1913, had a great influence on his exploration of these Moravian towns. Apart from Lanžhot, they also visited other Moravian towns (Rohatec, Třebotov, Týnec, etc.).

The language and expression of the early painting From Lanžhot are still marked by Kalvoda’s impressionism, but also by contemporary Art Nouveau and decorativism. The composition of the plain landscape motif is horizontally divided into two parts in the centre of the painting, separated by a river. In the first, the focal plan depicts a cornfield, in which the painter’s relaxed handwriting can be felt. The field is not recorded in a strictly realistic manner; on the contrary, the artist emphasizes its natural wildness and exuberance. We can see some parallels here with the paintings Among the Corn (1915) and Field with Corn (1915), which date from the same period, treat an identical subject and belong to a group of early works that differ markedly from the period of Benka’s peak production.