Viera Kraicová

Viera Kraicová
(1920–2012)

s one of the most distinctive figures of Slovak painting of the second half of the 20th century. The selection of the painter’s works presented at the Zlín exhibition is unique for several reasons: it features paintings from private collections, unknown works that have so far neither been exhibited nor published, the first showing of which will definitely represent both a discovery and a stimulus for further mapping and interpretation of the author’s work. From a collector’s point of view, it is a perfectly balanced collection, representing all basic forms and shapes of Kraicová’s spontaneous talents as painter and colourist – from drawings, distemper studies of paintings, and small forms of the so-called New Year Greeting cards to oil paintings from different periods of her work.

In an outstanding way, almost in a nutshell, the exhibition maps her development as a painter - from the beginnings, when she was putting to a test the semantic capacity of an elementary, magical character, being one of the first artists in Slovakia to test abstract expressions and experiment with them. In the early years, the colouring of her works was very delicate, rather subdued, built on the interplay of only a handful of colour shades, but later it became powerful and full-bodied and the artist became one of the foremost colourists of Slovak painting. The most important period for the development of her style were the 1960s, a period in which she experienced an almost eruptive outburst of creativity. With a stubbornness of a discoverer and an investigator – unusual for a woman – she began to uncover new ways of visual expression, unknown in Slovakia until then. The culmination of her work, which came in the second half of the decade, is represented in the exhibition by several distemper sketches for larger compositions. Kraicová‘s programme of spontaneous painting reached radical and unique levels: it was based on the re-melting and crossing of multiple stimuli of gestic and lyrical abstraction, mixing in a special way figuration with abstract expression.

She discovered the spontaneous recording of immediate mental situations and conditions, which she casually and impulsively transferred to paper and canvas, and was capable of identifying the expressive function of the colour mass and gestures with symbolic meanings and moods. In her hands, the brush became not only a means of painting, covering the surface with layers of paint, but also a drawing and writing tool. Her drawing had a more painting-like character, the main feature of her brushwork being the liberating impulsive gesture, which had an almost cathartic effect on her. Quite often, it was based on an archetypal character set – her outline sketched compositions reveal the simple ovoid of a head, a figure silhouette, groups of figures or half-figures. While in the 1970s her painting became more realistic, she later returned to free and emotional spontaneity.

In the 1980s, a new line of small formats appeared in her work – miniature-sized paintings, which, among other things, server as New Year greeting cards which she would every year send to her loved ones and friends. These small-sized distempers represent an exceptional and original chapter in her work; they were her most natural privatissimo. I believe that meeting with the work of Viera Kraicová will represent both a discovery and an exciting experience for the Czech cultural public.
 

Katarína Bajcurová