Uľjana Zmetáková has devoted her work to painting, printmaking, illustrations and tapestries...
Inventory No.: O 1909
Artist: Uľjana Zmetáková
Title: Reflections III
Year: 1989
Technique: tempera
Material: paper
Dimensions: 57 x 76.5 cm
Signature: none
Inventory No.: O 1910
Artist: Uľjana Zmetáková
Title: Reflections IV
Year: 1989
Technique: tempera
Material: paper
Dimensions: 57 x 79 cm
Signature: none
Uľjana Zmetáková has devoted her work to painting, printmaking, illustrations and tapestries. She has mostly focused on realism, but she is also one of the first representatives of photorealism in Slovakia.[1] Photorealism is a painting genre whose aim is to bring the most detailed reproductions of photography onto the canvas. Usually, the only modified elements of the image are the crop and the scale. Another one of its typical features is the depersonalised handwriting of the artist accompanied by technical perfectionism that can be achieved by applying the techniques of trompe l´oeil[2] or airbrush[3], or the use of various grids and templates. It makes the photorealistic paintings to be perceived as material documents of their period and to adopt the recording function of photography.
Zmetáková started to apply the photorealistic principles into her work while she was studying at AFAD in the early 1970s. At this time, other Slovak artists, mostly of the upcoming young generation, started to incorporate this genre into their artworks as well.[4] It is important to note that the Slovak variant of photorealism was different from the original American version. It was mostly due to the local social and historic context, but also due to the technological limits of our region.[5] Slovak artworks did not apply these tendencies in such a radical way as their American counterparts did – the composed images were not a “total” mechanical reproduction of the photographies. On the other hand, the canvas still contained the artist’s handwriting and their personal passion for the given motive.
Uľjana Zmetáková’s work focuses on the portrayal of urban landscape, still life, portraits or various interior scenes from her life. While reproducing these themes, the artist concentrates primarily on lights and shadows as well as the overall perspective and capturing different elements from specific angles, complicated bottom views and top views. U. Zmetáková’s printmaking training is also reflected in her paintings, mostly in her compositions, but also in the techniques she uses. Instead of using a brush, she applied her colours with a paint gun, which means she creates the images by matching different colour surfaces. The actual use of the gun as well as the composition of her images represent the artist’s effort to keep a healthy distance. Any given theme is not captured from the position of a painter, but from the position of a photographer.
The pieces titled Reflections III and Reflections IV continue her series of the same name that began in the late 1970s as a result of her travels to Italy. These intimate landscape-formatted images portray scenes from Venice as the main features of the city – the canals – suggest. Zmetáková focuses on depicting the surrounding landscape that is reflected in the water. These various reflections, glossy, metal, liquid surfaces, light effects, her fascination with everyday and often overlooked details have been some of the artist’s focus points since her student training.
Almost the whole composition of the Reflections III is filled with the surface of a canal, all the way to the horizon that outlines a sidewalk. While the costal sidewalk in the upper part of the image utilises realistic handwriting, the water surface reflecting various architecture is more abstract which invokes the impression of natural waves. Reflections IV positions the canal in the right part of the image using a rapid diagonal. Just like in the previous piece, it only portrays the canal and the nearby sidewalk, using the contrast of realistic and abstract approaches in one image. This imagery, however, also includes a little boat by a pontoon as well as a figure of a cat slowly approaching the canal in the bottom left part of the scene. The diagonal composition along with the cat’s movement increase the dynamics of the image and give it a piece of action and excitement. A characteristic feature of both of the images is the use of a cropped scene that continues beyond the picture frame. This cropping of a part of the reality follows the basic principles of photography. Other photography techniques applied in the artworks include capturing the scene from an immediate distance and other lower top views and diagonal angles.
Zmetáková created these images using tempera paint applied with a paint gun. This characteristically quick-dry technique enabled her to capture the scene immediately, incorporating non-glossy, non-blending colour tones. On one hand, the impersonal paint gun technique stresses how the artist keeps her distance from the portrayed theme, but on the other hand, it mediates the characteristic style of the artist that borders with printmaking with a visualised composition. Reflections III and Reflections IV and their focus on the everyday reality, intimate atmosphere and healthy distance of the artist from the theme are representative samples of photorealism in Slovakia.
Uľjana Zmetáková, daughter of the famous artist and collector Ernest Zmeták, was born March 1, 1951 in Bratislava. Between 1972 and 1977, she studied at AFAD in Bratislava at the department of printmaking and book illustrations under professor Orest Dubay. She entered the art scene in the mid 1970s. Since then, she has exhibited sporadically both at home and abroad. Some of her exhibitions include solo exhibitions at the Exhibition Hall at the University Library in Bratislava (2016), the Gallery of the Slovak Union of Visual Arts (2008) or the Ernest Zmeták Art Gallery in Nové Zámky (2006). She lives and works in Bratislava.
Mária Janušová
January 2018
Bibliography:
BALEKA, Jan: Výtvarné umění. Výkladový slovník. [Fine Art Dictionary.] Academia: Praha 2010 GERŽOVÁ, Jana (red.): Slovník svetového a slovenského výtvarného umenia druhej polovice 20. storočia. Od abstraktného umenia k virtuálnej realite. Idey – pojmy – hnutia [The Dictionary of International and Slovak Fina Art of the second half of the 20th century. From Abstract Art to Virtual Reality. Ideology – Terminology – Movements]. Kruh súčasného umenia Profil [Contemporary Art Circles Profile]: Bratislava 1999.
HRABUŠICKÝ, Aurel (ed.): Slovenské vizuálne umenie 1970 – 1985 [Slovak Visual Art 1970-1985]. [Exhibition Catalogue] Slovak National Gallery: Bratislava 2002.
VAŠKOVIČOVÁ, Hana: Uľjana Zmetáková. Tatran: Bratislava 1990.
Footnotes:
[1] The movement was created in the USA in the late 1960s where it originated thanks to the local strong realism tendencies that go back to the end of the 19th century. Another stimulus was their response to pop art, mostly its focus on civil themes and the portrayal of everyday, even trivial objects and situations.
[2] Trompe-l’œil (deceive the eye) is an expression that describes the use of realistic imagery that is supposed to make the depicted things seam real. The Western European art have used this technique since the ancient times, then throughout the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo or Surrealism in the 20th century.
BALEKA, Jan: Výtvarné umění. Výkladový slovník. [Fine Art Dictionary.] Academia: Praha 2010, p. 370.
[3] Airbrush is a painting technique that disperses the paint mechanically with the use of a paint gun or aerosol. It was developed for commercial art that preferred glossy, impersonal finishes. Peter Phillips, a representative of the British pop art scene, was the first one to use this technique between 1964-1965.
GERŽOVÁ, Jana: AMERICKÁ RETUŠ [AIRBRUSH]. In: GERŽOVÁ, Jana (red.): Slovník svetového a slovenského výtvarného umenia druhej polovice 20. storočia. Od abstraktného umenia k virtuálnej realite. Idey – pojmy – hnutia [The Dictionary of International and Slovak Fina Art of the second half of the 20th century. From Abstract Art to Virtual Reality. Ideology – Terminology – Movements]. Kruh súčasného umenia Profil [Contemporary Art Circles Profile]: Bratislava 1999, p. 29.
[4] Besides Uľjana Zmetáková, other Slovak representatives of the movement are Jozef Srna Sr., Julian Fila, Veronika Rónaiová, Miloš Šimurda or Oľga Bartošíková.
[5] Photorealism entered the Slovak art scene in the early 1970s, at the dawn of Normalisation, when after the loose 1960s, there were new strict rules for the use of socialist realism again. As the term socialist realism was not specifically defined, certain “deviations” were allowed. They accommodated some principles of modernism, one of which was photorealism. Even though it was formally in line with the Marxist theory as it depicted reality, it was troublesome due to the lack of authorship and its cold approach towards the theme that was typical for American photorealism.
For more details, see: JABLONSKÁ, Beata: Lži, dilemy a alternatívy obrazu [Lies, Dilemmas and Image Variations]. In: HRABUŠICKÝ, Aurel (ed.): Slovenské vizuálne umenie 1970 – 1985 [Slovak Visual Art 1970-1985]. [Exhibition Catalogue] Slovak National Gallery: Bratislava 2002, p. 74.