The spontaneous abstract and broad-spectrum abstracting work of Ján Hlavatý has a unique and specific place in the context of contemporary painting in Slovakia. Despite the fact that painting trends in the second half of the 1980s in Slovakia followed the path of the so-called “New” or Wild Painting,” by the early 1980s, Hlavatý chose his own path. He gradually creates his own unique way of utterance which is extremely extensive and cognitive, from delicate, even transparent color values, drawing-style brush strokes, up to nervous, pasty strokes and splashes, from quietly poetic and even lyrical tones, to monumental symphonies of colors. Color is his basic means of expression and building material. In many cases, it is based on experiencing the seen, touching the tangible, and mentally transposing it from the inside into coloristic compositions. His expression not only comes from, but directly uses figurative elements as stimuli and an essential starting point for a definitive composition-content construction. If we can find a specific sign or trace a figurative clue in one of his paintings, then perhaps in the next painting it is lost in a tangle of action or gestural brushstrokes. Our “task” as viewers is not to look for concrete signs of figurative subtext, but to try to enter into the paintings. Rather than binding the composition to a specific content, he tries to make the message open to the widest possible range of interpretations so that viewers can freely create associations according to their own imaginative disposition. Ján Hlavatý, with his expressive abstraction, is one of the most significant personalities on the contemporary Slovak art scene. His sensitivity and humility in the face of knowledge bring a stamp of truth and emotional power of utterance to the results on the visual plane.
Peter Krivda
Ján Hlavatý was born on August 8, 1955 in Zlaté Moravce. From 1975 to 1981 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava under prof. Ján Želibský. He lives and works in Bratislava.
Solo exhibitions:
1984 – Foyer lekárskej fakulty UK, Bratislava
1990 – Galéria Cypriána Majerníka, Bratislava
1991 – Galéria Mitte, Vienna
1992 – Štátna galéria, Nitra
1995 – Slovenský kultúrny inštitút, Budapest
1998 –Forum de I Hôtel de Ville, Saint Louis
2003 – A1 Galéria Slapansky/Slapansky, Munich
2006 – Galéria OPE, Příbram
2006 – Štátna galéria, Murská Sobota
2009 – Galéria SI, Prague
2015 – Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Bratislava
2016 – Galéria Jána Koniarka, Trnava
2017 – Oravská galéria, Dolný Kubín
2023 – Galéria Umelka (Umelecká beseda slovenská), Bratislava
