Veronika Rónaiová (* 1951)
Small Desires, 2018, a found work of art by Julián Filo – Small Desires, 1966
object / assemblage, 68 x 78 x 12 cm
from the collection of the from the collection of the Museum of Art in Žilina
obtained by purchase from the artist in 2019
The work of Small Desires (2018/1966) was modified by the artist by inserting a reproduction of her own painting and modifying some parts of it, e.g. by placing a black tape over the girl’s eyes – this is a photo of her from childhood. The assemblage was presented at the exhibition Heritage (PGU Žilina, 2018). The main line of the exhibition was personal and artistic communication with his parents – artists Julián Filo and Mária Filová. The author worked with her works, but also artifacts from an inherited collection of works by her parents, from which she created pictorial installations supplemented with charcoal drawings, resp. created redrawings and textual comments of situations that relate to specific events in life with parents – opinion pendants to inherited works communicated from today’s position. In the form of a presentation – with wall installations of paintings, supplemented by the overlap of the drawing on the wall, the artist followed up on the exhibition Little Retrospective (2003, PGU in Žilina), in which she presented her older hyperrealistic paintings pre-compositionally thought-out “clusters” (also used at the exhibition Inventure GJK Trnava, 2002), moved the medium of the painting into an expanded field.
Her entries in the works of her father, pop art and hyperrealist painter Julián Filo (1921 – 2007), ie the joint presence of two original manuscripts in the canvas, in the case of this work in the mass of an assemblage, are – metaphorically speaking – a dialogue between them, reference to the past, but without the possibility of Julián Filo to entering it. Against the background of this radical penetration into autonomous artistic expression (how these may seem at first glance), however, in addition to the gesture of appropriating the work of art after a relative, we can develop a reflection on blurring the contours of authorship: the artist added herself to Julián Filo’s signature. Furthermore, the artist’s firm belief in the justification of this gesture: paintings or her own artistic inputs to his works are an opportunity for her to continue communicating with her father and confronting their artistic views. But they are also a representation of the relationship: father – daughter, artist – artist, which she – from a gender perspective – expresses in this way.
The line of art and art criticism, which dealt with aspects of feminism and postfeminism and became more visible in our environment only after 1990, revealed the importance of the author’s work from this point of view: the form of non-radical the work of Veronika Rónaiová has been present almost constantly: in hyperrealistic paintings, created using the airbrush technique, realized since the mid – 70.s. years, the central motive was a woman – especially her position in the family unit or the wider social structure. In the new millennium, the author became an important element of the so-called “Self-positioning”, in which he defines his authorial position also in a broader sense – in the artistic and artistic spheres.
The acquisition of this work was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.
The purchase of this work was financed with the contribution of the Žilina self-governing region.
