Photo: Photo-Department of the Slovak National GalleryĽudovít Fulla celebrating his 74th birthday1972The gallery came to existence as a result of the donation agreement between Ľudovít Fulla and the state represented by the SNG. The artist donated his work as an integral collection of exhibits representing one of the fundamental pillars of modern Slovak art and the state undertook to build a gallery, together with a studio and flat. The implementation of the construction began in 1965 according to the design of Martin Kusý (implementation by Ing. Hatala) and on 2 July 1969 it was opened to the general public together with the collection of paintings which became part of the permanent exposition. The artist lived in the gallery almost until his death in 1980.
The Gallery of Ľudovít Fulla in Ružomberok is an extremely distinctive building outlined as a box whose precious contents are concentrated around the imaginary centre - the author himself. The gallery’s modest ground plan is formally composed of two objects built on each other. The exhibition space, flat and studio constitute one unit with separate operations. The hall designed as an ideal modern exhibition space, literally a “white cube”, is the heart of the building. The hall itself, which together with the studio occupies the entire floor, composed of the entrance and service spaces of the gallery, juts out as 15 metre rectangle. The gallery’s glassed entrance virtually invites passers-by to visit. Simply composed shapes, despite their relatively small scale, make an extraordinary impression and thus the building promotes itself through its own architecture.
Today, Fulla’s flat has been converted into a smaller exhibition space for short term exhibitions. Fulla’s office, living room and part of his studio have been preserved in their original state, and constitute a part of the artist’s work.
The last exposition of the work of Ľudovít Fulla, of which Katarína Bajcurová is the curators, was held in 2009.
Painter Ľudovít Fulla (born on 27 February 1902 in Ružomberok, died on 21 April 1980 in Bratislava) studied at the private school of Gustáv Mallý in Bratislava (1921 – 1922) and at the School of Applied Arts in Prague (1922 – 1927, under prof. Arnošt Hofbauer, František Kysela). After 1927, he worked as pedagogue in Slovakia; from 1929 – 1939 he was a professor at the progressive School of Arts and Crafts in Bratislava, whose ideas were close to those of the German Bauhaus. This is also the period of his fruitful cooperation with Mikuláš Galanda on the first and only manifesto of Slovak modern painting The Private Letters of Fulla amd Galanda (1930 – 1932). In 1937, he was awarded the Grand Prix at the world festival in Paris for his painting entitled Song and Labor. In 1942, Fulla was given a pension, and from 1943 he lived in Martin. From 1949 to 1952 he was the head of the department of monumental-decorative painting of the newly established Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, which he left due to political reasons. From 1956 to 1962, he lived in Žilina, where he established his first personal gallery. In 1962, he lived and worked in Ružomberok. From 1966 to 1977 he donated an extensive part of his work to the state. He worked in the fields of painting, graphic art, drawing, typography and stage design, as well as in the areas of book illustration, tapestries and monumental works for architecture.
Fulla tried to pose the question of whether one could be European and Slovak at the same time. From the 1930s, he connected techniques inspired by current European avant-garde painting, folk art, children’s artistic expression, iconographic painting and medieval art in a personalized way. The outcome was an original fine art language noted for its synthesis of the rational, constructive construction of shape and form with an intense, emotional colorfulness. However Fulla turned away from the doctrine of “absolute painting” which he perceived as a “diagram of the soul,” “play and pleasure,” “line-shapes and color-areas” to a more traditionally built theme of Slovak painting of the 20th century, towards a search for and expression of the national myth. However, he succeeded in shifting it to the level of authentic fine art utterance and expressing the Slovak myth in current fine art language.
Photo: Photo-Department of the Slovak National GalleryĽudovít Fulla's 74th birthday anniversary, master in the center, on his left is Minister of Culture Miroslav Válek 1972
Photo |1-2|: Photo-Department of the Slovak National GalleryView of the installation of master's art works1977
Contact:
SNG – Gallery of Ľudovít Fulla
Makovického 1
034 01 Ružomberok
Administrator: PhDr. Zuzana Gažíková
Tel.: 00-421-44-43 24 867, +43 24 868
Fax: 00-421-44-43 24 868
E-mail: ruzomberok@sng.sk
Opening Hours:
Open daily except Mondays from 10.00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.