Collection of Paintings, Sculptures, Prints, Drawings and Illustrations from the Years 1900–1960
Contains ±10,300 collection items
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Focus of the collection is works by artists from Bratislava and its surroundings – Karol Frech, Alojz Rigele, Jozef Blanarovits, Eugen Nemesszeghy, Róbert Kühmayer, Július Schubert, Maximilian Schurmann, Michal Staudt, Vojtech Marx, Ľudovít Pitthordt, Pavol Bán, Štefan Prohászka-Tallós; works by artists of Slovak modernism – Mikuláš Galanda, Ľudovít Fulla, Vincent Hložník, Ernest Zmeták, Imrich Weiner-Kráľ, Eugen Nevan, Ján Mudroch, Peter Matejka, Rudolf Pribiš, Miloš Alexander Bazovský, Jozef Kostka, Zoltán Palugyay, Ladislav Majerský; and works by other Slovak artists.
Thematically, the collection includes Bratislava vedute or partial views of the city, portraits, landscape paintings, still lifes, and sacral and historical themes. No part of the collection can be characterised as complete, although several of the authors mentioned above, especially Frech and Rigele from the Bratislava area, are better represented within the Bratislava City Gallery than anywhere else in Slovakia. Since no collecting institution possesses the entire artistic legacy of these authors, their collections in the GMB can be considered as complete entities. Conversely, prominent figures of Slovak modernism are less adequately portrayed in the collection, a representative assemblage of whose legacy has either reached the Slovak National Gallery (e.g. Ladislav Mednyánszky, Ľudovít Fulla), or is located in regional galleries (e.g. Anton Jaszusch, Konštantín Bauer, Konštantín Kővári-Kačmarik, Eugen Krón and Július Jakoby in the East Slovak Gallery). Works by Karol Harmos, Géza Szóbel, Arnold Peter Weisz-Kubínčan, Štefan Prohászka, František Reichentál, Peter Pálffy, Koloman Sokol, and Július Szabó are also represented in the collection in fragmentary form. Comprehensively represented are collections of Cyprián Majerník, Ján Želibský, Ester Martinčeková-Šimerová, Endre Nemes, Jakub Bauernfreund, Michal Staudt Sr., and Ladislav Guderna.
In terms of the overall profile of the collection, there remain omissions in the works of sculptors. Particularly vulnerable are works in plaster (the legacy of Róbert Kühmayer, Alojz Rigele). In the past, plaster models were cast in bronze to preserve them for the future, but since 1989 this has not been possible for financial reasons. Ideally, the sculpture collection would continually be supplemented with larger sets of works by Jozef Arpád Murmann, Ján Koniarek, Jozef Kostka, Fraňo Štefunko, Vojtech Löffler, Júlia Horová-Kováčiková, Rudolf Hornák, and Rudolf Uher.