Czecho-Slovak Student Life/Volume 18/Number 6/Joža Úprka, Leading Slovak Painter

by Charles John Heitzman

Joža Úprka, Leading Slovak Painter.
For the S. L. by Chas. J. Heitzman.

LOVAKIA, with her scenic beauties and the colorful, picturesque costumes of her folk, has long attracted artists of surrounding countries for the study of genre types and costumes. But to these men the purpose was entirely on the surface and their work could not, consequently, escape a banal superficiality.

In Joža Úprka, however, this part of the country seems to have found, at last, a spokesman. Úprka was born in 1861 at Kněžduby near Hroznová Lhota in Moravian Slovakia. His talent for drawing was fostered almost from infancy by his father, a passion ate lover of painting and an amateur painter of considerable ability. The mother was also a devotee of this art, and the interior of the Úprka home must have presented an interesting sight of a Sunday afternoon—Joža and his mother and father, bending over their respective paintings, exchanging the home-made brushes and home-made paints, just such a scene as Úprka would later have liked to paint. Perhaps just as important is the fact that Úprka’s father soon set the boy to modelling in clay.

Young Úprka studied at Strážnice and later in Olomouc. In neither of these places was drawing taught, but Úprka was continually dashing off sketches and perfecting his technique. It was but natural, then, that his drawings should attract attention. When this happened, and Úprka’s talent was recognized, his studies came to a sudden end, and he entered the Prague Academy.

As soon as he felt himself grounded in the technicalities of his art, he hurried back to sunny Slovakia. Here he painted for some time without causing much comment and without receiving recognition, except from a circle of select friends.

In 1894, however, Alfons Mucha, the Czech painter, urged him to send his canvas, “The Pilgrimage of St. Anthony”, to the Paris Salon for exhibition. Partly through the efforts of Mucha, the picture was exhibited and Úprka’s success was assured. He was invited to send the picture to Prague for exhibition, and in 1895 he ran a one-man exhibition in Prague. The same year the “Pilgrimage” won its second gold medal in a contest for a placard for the Ethnological Exposition in Prague.

About this time Úprka visited Paris and Munich, and in 1896 he undertook a tour of Germany. On his return he established himself in his native village. Here he has ever since had his atelier, in the open, and to this district he has devoted all his activities.

What distinguishes Úprka from his colleagues more than anything else is his freshness, his naive joy in color and line for their own sake, his unflagging interest in the bright and sunny aspects of his Slovakian village.

The “Pilgrimage of St. Anthony” is illustrative of all these characteristics. In the background kneel hundreds of peasants, clad in their bright-hued costumes. A woman in a particularly elaborate dress is detached from the crowd, and still farther in the foreground sits a young girl drinking from a jug. There are the bright colors, the sunny atmosphere, and the detail painted from pure joy of painting, which mark Úprka’s early work.

In “Spring: Moravian Slovakia” we see Úprka’s art developing. He has evolved to realistic impressionism, yet the major characteristics remain. The picture represents two oxen just unhitched from a harrow trailing-cart, which shows a little to the right. A barefoot girl in peasant dress holds the oxen by a rope. There is nothing of the formal grouping of the first picture in this. It gives one the impression that the painter just happened on the scene and, without choosing a particular angle, sketched the objects, revivifying them from his own stock of love of color and light. It seems that as long as there are sunshine and color, and people, Úprka will be happy.

“In Church: Slovakia” represents Úprka’s later period. The solid colors of his earlier work have here given
Joža Úprka: In Church: Slovakia.
Joža Úprka: Grandmother. place to more subtle gradations and there is no grouping whatsoever, no striving after effect. It is a piece of pure realism presented in Úprka’s impressionistic method. There is no evidence that the artist’s interest in color and light has declined. We find here the same picturesque costumes, their colors almost strongly accentuated, and the whole picture, considering that it is an interior scene, is remarkably light.

In the long row of his pictures Úprka has captured all the moods of Slovakia. His subjects include dances, marriage-feasts, children’s games, funerals, pilgrimages, processions, beggars, the peasant at his work and at his devotions; yet he has succeeded in raising them to a level that is higher than what is ordinarily understood by “genre”. And always we find light, and color, and life in his pictures.

As technique developed he has turned to tonal harmonies both in oils and aquarelles. He remains a master of color and his favorite treatment of it is in the flaming reds and the bright light of noon, against a background shimmering in the summer sun.

Early in his career Úprka departed from the slightly grim method of the Munich school and developed this original method. He has become a leader of a group of painters who follow his method and his regionalism. They have erected at Hodonín, the center of their activities, a “Fine Arts Gallery” and are employed in propagating this method throughout the land.

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