JUST AS NATURE IMITATES ART (OSCAR WILDE), SOME OLD MASTERS IMITATE ME
The creator of a programme of analytical painting based on the principle of trompe l’oeil (optical illusion). Member of the avance-retard artists’ group. He belongs to the circle of secondary-school graduates under Prof. Rudolf Fila (School of Applied Arts, 1961 – 1965) who, at the end of the 1970s, developed a new visual form of the concept with the aim of preserving the inner authenticity of their work. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts under Prof. D. Milly and Prof. P. Matejka (1965 – 1971); in 1982 – 2008 he taught at the Josef Vydra School of Applied Arts in Bratislava. At the centre of Bočkay’s artistic conception lies the age-old problem of art and illusion, of reality and fiction.
What in fact is painted and what is real? Where does the border between them lie? He addresses these questions by means of a precise old-masterly painting technique, with which, however, he examines newly defined artistic problems of relations: of painting and drawing, of surface and space, of illusion and the illusion of illusion. The multiple illusionising of spatial planes and of the basic means of artistic expression nevertheless leads the painter further, towards a general formulation of a reflection on the essence of the medium.
Katarína Bajcurová in: Modern Slovak Art. Bratislava: Interpond, 1997
Milan Bočkay (1946 Krušovce)
1961 – 1965 - studied at the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Bratislava (at Professor Rudolf Fila and Štefan Schwartz)
1965 – 1971 - studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava (at Professor Dezider Milly and Peter Matejka)
1982 – 2008 - taught at the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Bratislava
1991 - member of the group A-R
