Christian Iconography and Contemporary Art in Slovakia before and after 1989

Abstract

The paper reviews the development of Christian iconography in the work of visual artists in Slovakia before and after 1989, when there was a change in the social order (the Velvet Revolution). Attention is focused on the gradual transformation of the artists’ interest in traditional motifs, which include Christian iconography, and which face contemporary artists with the challenge of conducting a dialogue with themes that have been depicted for centuries. The text concisely maps the work of six artists from different generations: Julian Fila, Klara Bockayova, Ladislav Carný, Dorota Sadovska, Matus Lanyi and Jan Mathe. Jan Mathe is an artist who managed to raise Christian (Marian) iconography to the language of abstraction, and paradoxically was enabled during the normalisation period to site his sculptures with Marian themes in public places in Kosice. Among a number of artists we can follow a degree of interpretative tension, where the artists leave us an open field for the formulation of our own point o...