Viera Kleinová: Zachrániť alebo vymazať?

The Ceramic Practice of Juraj Martha and Jozef Sušienka in Public Spaces.

This lecture is a contribution to the public discourse on art in public spaces, which in recent years—thanks to institutional and activist initiatives—has undergone a dynamic shift toward the exploration, interpretation, preservation, and revitalization of this still “hot” aspect of our cultural heritage. At the same time, it serves as an appeal and joins the efforts of colleagues from Banská Bystrica and Hlohovec, who recently initiated the preservation of a large-scale and unique ceramic work—Jozef Sušienka’s Wall in the park near the SNP Memorial in Banská Bystrica.

A significant portion of the numerous works by Juraj Martha and Jozef Sušienka installed in public spaces is gradually becoming (or has already become) a victim of our persistently ambiguous and often dismissive attitude toward the modernist art, design, and architecture of real socialism. Their materiality is an additional problem. Is it just “playing with clay” for us? Is the relationship to ceramics an argument for its long-term survival as a (non-)picturesque ruin?

The lecture will explore how ceramics asserted themselves in the urban “nature” (J. Sušienka), as well as the arguments through which they negotiated their collaboration with architecture (J. Marth). It will ask where, how, and why the ceramic codes of these sculptors were transposed into the environments of, in particular, Bratislava, Hlohovec, Banská Bystrica, and Piešťany.

Viera Kleinová is a design historian and curator. Until March 2025, she was the curator of the Design and Applied Arts Collections at the Slovak National Gallery (SNG) in Bratislava. She currently works at the Department of Art Theory and History at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (VŠVU) in Bratislava. She has long been a collaborator and curator of the Bratislava Design Week International Festival. She focuses on research into the materiality of clay and is interested in the discourse and practice of material disciplines in the 20th century.