The print titled A Day by the Atlantic II. is one of the more intimate pieces created by Slovak painter and illustrator Edita Ambrušová. The black and white world of lithography offers a surrealistic visual experience, perhaps a memory of the artist’s view and experience of the sea. The front part of the print features tree trunks, or possibly corals (?) and traces of a sandy shore. The artist’s meticulous hand offers us glimpses of the sea in the background and implies mountain ranges on the horizon that separate the reflections of light on the water surface from the light phenomena in the sky – at the same time, they divide and join two worlds (the world of water and the world of air). The birds are inconspicuous participants at the scene that are able to enjoy both the depth of the sea and the heavenly and liberating overview of the world thanks to their wings they use to fly unobtrusively in the (un)restricted space of the scene. Wings are the things we as people do not have. However, we can grow them as we study art that breaks the limits of our own imagination.
Edita Ambrušová (Ružomberok 30 October 1920 – Bratislava 9 March 2015)
She studied under Martin Benka, Maximilián Schurmann and Ján Koniarek at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava and she also studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She studied together with Viera Kraicová. Her work mostly consisted of painting, illustrating and printmaking. She focused on sacral motives of Slavic and Slovak saints but also various genre themes like still life and vistas (G-765, or G-762). She spent a part of her life in Trnava where she worked on a series of oil paintings and prints that were inspired by her life in Slovak “Little Rome”. In the second half of 1960s and early 1970s she worked on important monumental projects – stained glass for the St. Emmeram’s Cathedral in Nitra and large-scale Grad Moravia-themed tapestry. Many of the artist’s favourite themes were inspired by her interest in cultural life and literature. Her husband, Jozef Ambruš, a literary scientist, shared her interest in socialising with representatives of modernism in the Catholic Church (e.g. Janko Silan, Andrej Žarnov or Valentín Beniak) which led to a natural adoption of the sacral themes that culminated in the 1990s in cooperation with her daughter, Johana. Only after her daughter died, one of their long-term projects was published in 2004 – a transcription of Proglas.
Ľudmila Kasaj Poláčková
Bibliography
FISCHEROVÁ, Anna: Paleta Edity Ambrušovej [The Palette of Edita Ambrušová], Bratislava, Perfekt, 2006
Inventory No.: G 765
Artist: Edita Ambrušová
Title: A Day by the Atlantic II.
Year of origin: 1975
Technique: litography
Material: paper
Dimensions: 50 × 30,5 cm
Signature: pencil in the centre under the print, 22/30 E.Ambrušová