In the spring of 2021, after 30 years, an exhibition of a selection from the works of Július Koreszku titled “J. Koreszku Gallery” concluded at the Záhorie Museum in Skalica. The curator of the exhibition was Ms. Božena Juríčková from the Záhorie Gallery in Senica. The extended exhibition was the only permanent one that the Záhorie Gallery could boast for most of its existence. It consisted of more than 30 paintings by this significant regional artist. After the pieces were returned to our collections, most of them required restoration work, whether it was surface cleaning of the painting, frame repairs, or, in some cases, filling in cracks. The restoration of returned and previously unexhibited paintings from the gallery’s collections was divided into three phases. Following the instructions of the Art Support Fund, we selected both severely and slightly damaged pieces for restoration and divided the restoration into three stages. The first completed stage, consisting of various genre motifs (mainly landscapes and still lifes), is now available for viewing in the gallery. As December 1st marks 65 years since the artist’s passing, after Ján Mudroch, we commemorate another author whose unattained jubilee we symbolically recognize this year. This exhibition marks the culmination of a year of jubilees at the Záhorie Gallery.

Roman Popelár

Life of Július Koreszku

Painter Július Koreszka was born on February 24th, 1895, in the village of Dojč near Senica, in the family of a small farmer. He began his high school studies in Bratislava but completed them in Skalica, where his parents had moved in the meanwhile. In 1914, he started studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest but left a few months later to join the front as a direct participant in World War I, witnessing events that marked him for life. He continued his artistic studies at the Prague Academy under Professor Maximilián Pirner from 1919 to 1924. After leaving Prague, he settled in Bratislava, where he lived until 1936, when, following the death of his first wife, he moved to Skalica to live with his parents. Here, in his beloved town, in seclusion and modesty, he spent over twenty years until his death on December 1st, 1958.

Works of Július Koreszku

The painting oeuvre of landscape artist Július Koreszka constitutes a quiet yet enduring part of Slovak art history in the first half of the 20th century. It is substantially fixed on the Skalica region, which the artist transformed, in harmonious consonance with realistic sensual origins, emotional interpretative connections, and classical painting language, into an authentic poetic form. In his artistic interpretation of the local landscape, he elevated a restrained post-Impressionist tradition supported by strong expressive elements and a decorative, flat color culture. He excluded the figure from the painting or limited it to an illustrative, peripheral position. During his stay in Bratislava, he was inspired by the lyrical meditative Danube landscape with subtle figurative staffage. Koreszka announced his artistic, highly lyrical genre painting program (landscape, marginally still life) during his studies in Prague. However, it was preceded by the period of World War I, from which several sketchbooks of pencil drawings with more civilian scenes from military life originated. Despite external circumstances or the adversity of the time, he respected the lyrical genre program throughout his entire creative period.

Božena Juríčková