What do you value about Adam Szentpétery's work? What makes this visual artist unique?
First and foremost, it is a coherent, long-term programme in the field of geometric abstraction. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, he managed to return to his native Gemer region – to Rožňava – and endure in this environment, creating an authentic painterly language where line, surface and colour form the foundation of his pictorial system. In particular, the combination of his favourite cadmium yellow and red – their mutual tension and pulsation. Finally, his role as a teacher is also immensely important (which, unfortunately, cannot be seen in the exhibition). Adam Szentpétery was a co-founder of the new Department of Fine Arts and Intermedia at the Faculty of Arts of the Technical University in Košice, where he led the Studio of Contemporary Image for over two decades and nurtured several generations of new talent.
How did you conceive the exhibition? Is it a cross-section of his entire body of work?
Although the exhibition takes a retrospective snapshot of the last twenty years, from 2007 to 2026, it summarises his entire painting career over the past forty years. Together with the artist, we selected five core series of paintings that he developed in parallel. These are Compressed Spaces, Right-Angle Compositions, Scores, and core circular or elliptical cycles of works with a dense structure and a 3D illusion within the painting, titled Deformations and Network (the latter of which gave its name to the entire exhibition). Thus, pictorial structures in three fundamental directions and the 'curvature' of space on a two-dimensional surface – these are the key elements of Adam Szentpétery's current exhibition. He is among the very best in the field of geometric abstraction in Central Europe – alongside Imre Bak, Dóra Maurer, Zdeněk Sýkora or Alojz Klima; from his generation, I should at least mention Mária Balážová and Viktor Hulík.
Have you known Adam Szentpétery for a long time? How long have you been following his work?
The exhibition is also the result of our long-standing friendship, spanning nearly forty years. I have been following his work since the late 1980s, and I also curated his first solo exhibition at the Tatra Gallery in Poprad in 1994. I have curated several of his recent exhibitions – Danubiana 2018, the Ján Koniarek Gallery in Trnava 2023, Schemnitz Gallery in Banská Štiavnica 2023, and the Vasarely Museum in Budapest 2023–24. Finally, we were together at the founding of the aforementioned department of art in Košice, where we also worked together for some time.
Does Slovakia currently have many exceptional visual artists?
It certainly does, even with an impact on the international scene. To mention just a few: the recent exhibition of Roman Ondak at the Prague Kunsthalle, the currently running exhibition of Mária Bartuszová at the Olomouc Museum of Art, or the key retrospective of Stano Filko at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg (Georg Baselitz is exhibited above him, and Mária Bartuszová is already in the permanent collection), a nearby smaller exhibition of Julo Koller at the Rupertinum, and so on. This year, I curated a joint French-Slovak exhibition at the Olivier Waltman Gallery in Paris, featuring Michal Černušák, Viktor Frešo, Michal Mráz and Natália Šimonová (currently a finalist for the 2026 Oskár Čepan Award), as well as the ongoing retrospective of the painter Bohdan Hostiňák at the Orava Gallery in Dolný Kubín. That is it in a nutshell.
What do you see as the mission of a curator's work today, and indeed, that of an art critic? You studied at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University (FFUK) – what did these studies give you?
Officially, I graduated in the field of Art History and Theory, which is a magical connection between science and art (perhaps that is why I also dedicate myself to the field of geometric art). A graduate can become an art critic – journalist, a curator of exhibitions or collections, a museum professional, a heritage preservationist, a teacher or an academic researcher. I have spent most of my life in the gallery sector as an art historian and curator. I look back on my student days in Bratislava with a certain nostalgia, and yet a sense of absurdity at the same time. We studied painting from black-and-white reproductions, we looked through barbed wire from Devín, and we could not even go to Vienna to see the originals of Caravaggio, Titian or Rembrandt. On top of that, an enormous amount of wasted time: two years of compulsory military training, Marxist lectures and seminars, physical education... But there were also my first opera experiences, Italian directors at the Mladosť cinema, school field trips to Bohemia, bands like Chór vážskych muzikantov and Pražský výběr, and parties at the Mlyny student halls. It was a lively time, and our studies were part of it.
You are a respected expert, so there must be a lot of interest in collaborating with you. How do you choose the artists for whom you curate exhibitions?
In curatorial work, there are essentially two types of exhibitions: a curatorial concept or theme followed by the selection of artists who reflect that theme, or an individual exhibition by an artist, which involves an intensive dialogue between the participants on how to build the entire narrative of the exhibition and the selection of the works themselves. Naturally, there is also a lot of production work involved – finances, grants, transport, insurance of works, loans, exhibition architecture, press releases, graphic design, etc. In addition to curatorial work, I am involved in several international projects, such as the Artis educational project for schools, also supported by the EU, where we cooperate with German, Italian and Czech partners, or the Green Bill research and exhibition project focusing on ecological issues for the years 2027–28. In a short time, a comprehensive publication by the Tatra Gallery in Poprad will be released, featuring my study 'The Tatras – Symbol and Image'. So, there is plenty to do.
You also have experience as a gallery director. Do you therefore have a more nuanced understanding – thanks to this experience – of the current situation regarding the demonstrative rejection of the SNG management? Are you not afraid of a boycott? Our art community is divided, and at the moment, passions prevail that do not respect professionalism and stifle the presentation of values. Did you feel this while preparing the exhibition for the SNG?
Indeed, contemporary society is significantly polarised. It is a pity that this is directly reflected in the cultural community as well. After considering all these facts, Szentpétery and I nevertheless decided to prepare his exhibition at the Slovak National Gallery because, in my opinion, he simply belongs there. At the same time, we see it as a restart for the gallery and the establishment of normal operations, also within an international context. Naturally, in a certain part of the art community (especially following a rather unfair article in Denník N), it caused some disappointment or outrage – that is their right and position, and I respect it. However, this politicking or labelling does not bear much fruit; rather, it further deadens our – already anaemic – art scene.
