Kunt Ernő szerk.: Kép-hagyomány – Nép-hagyomány (Miskolc, 1990)

I. RÉSZTANULMÁNYOK - Olga Danglová: Tájképek paraszti lakásbelsőkben

LANDSCAPE PAINTING IN FOLK ENVIRONMENT DANGLOVÁ OLGA In folk picture production in Slovakia as well as in Central Europe, the depiction of country was rare, even if one takes into account the period of its greatest flourishment-the nineteenth century. If it occurred at all, the landscape formed either a complement to topical figures with religious content as in paintings on glass or a token background to pastoral topics as in pastoral woodcarvings. Also, the topic of country is rarely to be seen in the selection of oil-print reproductions used for decorating the interiors of rural households. In Slovakia oil-prints with religious themes prevailed until the first half of the twentieth century. It is paradoxical to some extent that, as with lithographic production in the nineteenth century, the representation of landscape was very popular. In Europe the last century can be characterized by an admiration of nature. People began to discover the beauty of the high mountains-the aeps, the Pyrenees, the Apennines, the Carpathians, the Tatras in Slovakia, and the Ore Mountains in Bohemia. They were wandering the mountains and searching for interesting natural motifs, picturesque sceneries, castles, ruins, and architectonic monuments, celebrating a national past. A romantic, but rather second-hand attitude towards landscape had been manifested in the interest with landscape painting, and it was also transferred into mass production of lithographs. There appeared albums containing series of shots from certain regions (Upper Hungary and the environs of Bratislava, Balaton, Transdanubian regions, Transylvania) and illustrated travels. The country can also be found in illustrated journals and postcards, and probably through them rural people shaped their visual impressions of picturing landscape and natural seenery. However, it still did not break the barrier of cultural and aesthetic normes so as to appear in the art of the village people as an independent and separate subject. An exception to this rule in Slovakia can be found in the so-called „salase"-paintings of miners from the vicinity of Banská Stiavnica which occurred mainly in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century. They formed a component part of plastic or paper Christmas cribs. The „salase" were placed on the front of boards where the Christmas cribs were situated. Pastoral scenes-shepherds playing on bagpipes, taking a rest, or milking and tending sheep-were composed rather loosely in regards to the landscape. The country was drawn in a naive manner and mostly without any drawing or color perspective; instead, they were made by the collage method. Some painters of „salase"' directly used the method of collage. They cut out figures of shepherds and sheep from postcards, calendars, and reading books; they then stuck them onto backgrounds of handpainted landscapes. When one considers that the number of these motifs was great (approximately 10 to 30 figures would be arranged among vegetation and architecture in the picture), one has to admit that such a composition needed skill and invention. 5 M