Basics Beatrix (szerk.): Egy modern festő és klasszikus gyűjteménye. Válogatás Ernest Zmeták (1919-2004) alkotásaiból és gyűjteményéből - A Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, D. sorozat: Múzeumi füzetek - Kiállításvezetők 2. (Szentendre, 2013)

Gyula Barczi: Ernest Zmeták and Hungarian Modernism

Ernest Zmeták (1919-2004) is considered unique in the history of Slovak art. He experienced modernism, the heroic period of art, and his style derived from that, though he cannot entirely be connected to any ‘ism’. He always respected the classic picture and his artistic predecessors. Thus, the exhibition in the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava, held in March 2011 was entitled The Last Classicist, Zmeták became prominent in Slovak art not only because of his style but also due to his unusual personality. He is one of the few Slovak artists who did not study painting at the Academy in Prague, but at Budapest’s University of Fine Arts.

Zmeták highly respected his teachers, Vilmos Aba-Novák, István Szőnyi and Béla Kontuly - and not only them. The atmosphere of interwar Budapest, the Hungarian middle-class life, the galleries, collections and antique shops had a great effect on him and strongly influenced his oeuvre as an artist and his career as a collector.

When Zmeták returned to Slovakia in 1943, art historians immediately recognized his characteristics and his connections with Hungarian modernism. Slovak art gained an artist who already had his own perspective in the early ‘40s, an individual view of the world coupled with radical ideas that sometimes evoked disputes. He devoted a significant part of his oeuvre to Italy, paying homage to Aba-Novák, antiquity and old masters. The Czechoslovak state made it possible for him as a patron and the actual founder of the gallery in Nővé Zámky to travel to Italy several times a year. The above-mentioned exhibition in Bratislava was the first to present Zmeták, the private collector. He compiled works of art, antique art objects and artistic curiosities, his collection consisting of

more than 3,000 items.

The exhibition organized for Szentendrei ArtMill in spring 2013 will provide a good opportunity to acknowledge Ernest Zmeták, an outstanding personality of 20th-century Slovak art, while recognizing and presenting his Hungarian artistic roots.

Aba-Novák Vilmos:

Tehenek az Hatónál /

Cows by the Water, 1925-1927