Albin Brunovsky
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Albín Brunovský (25 December 1935, Zohor, Czechoslovakia – 20
January 1997, Bratislava, Slovakia) was a Slovak painter, graphic
artist, lithographer, illustrator and pedagogue, considered one of
the greatest Slovak painters of the 20th century.
Albín Brunovský was born in
Zohor, Czechoslovakia on Christmas Day, December 25 in 1935.
Brunovský started his early career in art by working on stage set
and poster design. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in
Bratislava under Prof. Vincent Hložník from 1955 to 1961. The
Hloznik School was well known for its high artistic and technical
preparation in graphic arts and its humanist perspective. For the
founder, as for many of his students, Goya’s great graphic cycle
“The Horrors of War” served as a pattern or model. Brunovský himself
lectured at that Academy from 1966 to 1990. In 1981 he was appointed
a professor, creating his own engraving school several years later.
Brunovský's work often mirrored that of the modern movement,
citation art. Brunovský was also the designer of the last series of
Czechoslovak banknotes. His illustrations were primarily for
children's books.
Over the course of his career,
Brunovsky experimented with various graphic techniques and was
highly influenced in his subject matter by poetry and literature, as
well, of course, as by other artists. While at school he used the
techniques of woodcuts and linocuts. Soon after, however, he began
experimenting with “scraper” and chalk lithography. Etching were the
characteristic mode of his graphic art work during the mid-1960s. He
was, however, a painter too. Many of his illustrations were done in
watercolor and he eventually began to paint major works.
As his mastery of various
techniques evolved over time, so too did his vision as an artist.
When he was young, Brunovsky exhibited surrealistic
tendencies—defined as a tendency to individualism and absurdity and
the unchecked play of the subconscious. Later his work became more
evaluative and critical of Man in relation to himself and society.
