Eduard Antal — Composition IV. & V.

Eduard Antal was an important representative of Slovak geometric abstract art. His work focused mostly on painting, printmaking, graphic design and monumental decorative elements in architecture. The basis for his work was nature, its formal diversity and laws of physics such as strength, rotation, gravitation or waves. He relied on either clear or structured surface. He would gradually reduce the colour palette and finally end up with pure white on white background in the late 1960s. He would not express himself through storytelling, but rather a clean language of signs and forms. His work was influenced by science, technology and mostly architecture – probably because he spent most of life teaching at the faculty of architecture.

Nitra Gallery’s collection includes two prints by Eduard Antal that are a part of his Compositions series. They were made using the blind print technique where the paper is embossed without using any colours. It results into various textured effects, plays of lights and shadows, surfaces and structures. His means of expression is not colour, but the relief depicting various geometric shapes, such as squares and circles. In the emptiness (pure whiteness of the paper), there is, just like in the universe, a dynamic movement of elemental forms in their endless variations and rotations…