International studio (50.1913)

Studio- Talk


“IN THE WALLACH COUNTRY5’

(Kiinstlerhaiis, Coding)

BY BOHUMIR JARON&K

be present at the opening of their new Art Gallery,
which has been built by their national architect,
Antonie Blazek. The ceremony was most impres-
sive, not merely on account of the officials present
but still more so from the fact that the peasants
came from all parts clothed in their richest national
garbs, some on foot, others on horseback, while
numbers of gaily dressed youths and maidens
travelled in their village carts, tastefully decorated
with green boughs and bright-hued field flowers.
Surely never has there been such an opening
ceremony as this. And these peasants gladly paid
the entrance fee of a krone (tenpence), and bought
catalogues which they carefully studied, and I saw
more than one engaged in explaining the pictures
to those less well versed in the subject than them-

selves. Nor was this the only sign of their interest,
for without their pecuniary help this Art Gallery
would in all probability have had a long time
to wait before being erected.
The society by which this gallery at Goding
has been called into existence, the Society of Fine
Arts of Moravian Slovakei, was founded in 1907.
But already in 1902 the first art exhibition was
held in Goding in a schoolroom. This was so
successful from every point of view that the idea was
conceived of forming a great organisation of Slovak
artists and of holding periodical exhibitions in a
gallery of their own. The scheme met with material
as well as artistic success, so that in 1909 the manage-
ment was enabled to invite the Polish-Moravian
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