As a little boy, I liked strolling in my grandparents’ garden. It was a very big garden and I was so small that my grandparents always had to look for me. Naturally, they kept looking for me because I was so quiet and attentively observing and admiring all those huge blades of grass, flowers and ferns, thorns and thistles that grew around me. They were all extremely fascinating. Most of them were taller than me. They were graceful and elegant and I found them so beautiful. They were all the more astonishing because I discovered countless small and big flies, grasshoppers and ladybirds, dragonflies, bees and a variety of beetles and insects on all the plants around me. As I was growing up, my childhood garden and everything I found there as a small child expanded. I have never left the garden and it has never left me. I keep returning to that garden and to my childhood.
“One hand cannot clap,” as the old saying goes. You actually need two hands. It would be impossible for me to prepare this series of monotypes by myself. So with my friend, a great intaglio printmaker Martin Štěpánek, we started this experiment in his graphic studio in Veľké Zálužie. We enthusiastically printed the first eleven, then another eleven and yet another eleven prints in several formats until we created the “Botanical Dream no. 11” presented in this art book designed by Marek Štěpánek. I hope that you will be equally enchanted and delighted by that eleven from the “Botanical Dream no. 11”. I would happily invite you for a walk in this garden in that dream.
Milan Lukáč, March 2021
MILAN LUKÁČ, 1962
1981-1987 Academy of Fine Arts in Bratisla-va (prof. J. Kulich, prof. L. Snopek), 1985-1986 E. N. S. B. A. Paris (prof. J. Cardot). Internships: Cité internationale des arts in Paris, Eurocreation - Niort (FR), Kulturkontakt - Vienna (AT), Mad-rid (ES). Participation on many symposiums in Slovakia and abroad. Many solo and collective exhibitions. Awards: Prix de portrait Paul-Louis Weiller (1990), Académie des Beaux-Arts, In-stitut de France in Paris, Martin Benka Award (1988), Prix Itinéraire Levallois-Perret (1998) and others. His work is presented in public and private collections in Slovakia and abroad. He lives in Bratislava and is focused on sculpture, drawing, graphic techniques and painting. Since 1990 at the Faculty of architecture and design on the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. He is the author of many monumental works.
