Ľudovít Slamka —On Pasture by the Nitra River

We are looking at the opposite river bank whose left side is covered in trees and there is a woman with three cows on the right. The image is very sketch-like, relaxed, the background melts into blurred colours, the small surface area of the painting captures the atmosphere very convincingly, without the need for any details to fill in the blanks. It is a simple genre landscape, but from a broader perspective of the artist’s program, it is a very unconventional work for him. 

Ľudovít Slamka almost never focused on “rural” themes, like grazing cattle, his landscapes are usually dominated by urban motifs, and he also used the technique of aquarelle very rarely. The Nitra Gallery collection contains only one other aquarelle from this period, it features a similar atmosphere and colour palette, but not the subject – it depicts an old cemetery (O 1934 – Ľudovít Slamka: The Historical Cemetery by the Former Camaldolese Monastery on Zobor in Nitra, 1930 – 1939, aquarelle on paper, 18 x 14 cm).

The 1930s were marked by a global economic depression, the establishment of several autocratic regimes, unstable political landscapes both in Europe and worldwide, unemployment, emigration and social issues. These themes were also reflected in Slovak art. Ľudovít Slamka, a fresh graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, spent the whole decade focusing on various social and critical motifs. Among the most distinctive ones were his expressive and naturalistic portraits of people living on the fringes of society, like beggars, vagrants or workers. Unfortunately, many of his works from the 1930s are lost forever.¹ However, the Nitra Gallery collection includes one of Slamka’s best paintings from this period, capturing in an expressive, or perhaps even grotesque way two old women praying the rosary at a cemetery gate. (O 262 – Ľudovít Slamka: At a Cemetery, 1936, oil on canvas, 87 x 71 cm)

World War II halted Slamka’s promising creative development and due to his financial troubles, he could no longer afford to keep working as a freelance artist and art later became only a hobby of his which did not respond to the period trends in painting. Nevertheless, his work becomes interesting again in the 1960s when he focused mostly on urban vistas – narrow streets, secluded places, historical monuments and Nitra’s subdivisions. He also produced a few “seaside” images inspired by his travels to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Italy. Ľudovít Slamka was a regional artist and his style did not offer anything progressive for that time, but the most important part of his program is the documentary aspect of his work as he was able to capture the undergoing development of Nitra. Nitra Gallery owns almost forty oil paintings from this period where he uses his characteristic short and energetic brush strokes, thick black outlines and colourful palettes, effectively capturing the daylight or the given season and recording the birth of new residential areas and various other public buildings, from the Slovak University of Agriculture to the Specialised Hospital on Zobor.