Philately News

Title: Ján Mudroch
Date of Issue: 27 November 2009
Country: Slovakia
Denominations: 1.20€

Ján Mudroch (1909 Senica-Sotina – 1968 Bratislava). He attended a private school of painting of Gustáv Mallý, he continued at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (unofficially UMPRUM) in Prague (1930–1933) and he completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (prof. Obrovský and W. Nowak).

He left a permanent impression in the history of Slovak fine arts mainly in connection with the painting of Generation 1909 (he belonged to the Bratislava branch) and the movement of Avant-garde 38. The starting point of his production reached back to such examples as P. Cézanne and post-impressionism painting at all. Apart from the carrier in painting, Mudroch was involved in public life, he has great merits in renewal of Art Society (Umelecká beseda), establishment of Slovak National Gallery and Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, where he was a Chancellor.

He returned to Slovakia in 1938 and he immediately established himself as the leading personality – he started as a teacher at the School of Applied Arts, then he taught at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design. He arrived excited by the city full of expectations and requirements. What the artists appreciated in Mudroch was the artist of painting temperament with fixed and logical solution of the surface, the same as with the old masters. The most productive years of his work shall fall within this period, his works reach a peak at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s and, except for the painting called Foreign Rose (1940), the painting that falls within this period is called Madonna with Black Glory (1939) which he painted several versions of. The model for Madonna was a photograph – this was not unique for the author, his attitude was similar in case of the work called Murdered Poet (1939). He assessed his fascination by Rembrandt, which was demonstrated by modification of some of his stylistic effects in the modernistic spirit. Apart from the formal expression, he was interested in the intellectual world of his art; the apparently simple form was filled with internal dramatic story. On the background of chiaroscuro painting, of which the glaring colours emerge, he pervaded his works by dark visionary atmosphere underlined by the selected names, as in this case. It is these works that are nowadays considered to be the peak of Mudroch’s art.

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