Viera Kraicová – Paintings 1962 – 1994

The monographic exhibition “Viera Kraicová: Paintings 1962–1994” presents works by this extraordinary painter and illustrator included in the Nedbalka Gallery´s collection. It provides an overview of her body of work from the early 1960s up to the mid-1990s, with the emphasis on paintings from the turn of the sixth and seventh decade. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue put her artistic development into the context of political, institutional, and gender specifics of former Czechoslovakia. They examine Kraicová´s entrance on the art scene, and her ground-breaking performance as a member of the first women-only art group in Slovakia – Group 4 (1958–1966, together with Oľga Bartošíková, Jarmila Čihánková and Tamara Klimová).

The exhibition presents the artist´s painting experiments hovering on the border of abstraction and figuration, her spontaneous gestural paintings, imaginative figurative works and returns to colour patch as a crucial means of expression and intermediary of emotional expression. There are also represented classical genres like still life or portrait as well as records of the artist´s spontaneous painting that, in a way, always followed the contours of a figural basis. The exhibition covers a broad range of painter´s work that remains easily recognisable despite being permanently updated and rediscovered. Never really transcending the boundaries of a classical painting, Kraicová kept expressing her feelings and ideas on the canvas or paper.

Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.