Jozef Kostka

Biography

Kostka's first craft was ceramics. He trained in the pottery workshop of his relative Ferdiš Kostka, and only afterwards came sculpture.

Jozef Kostka was born on 29 January 1912 in Stupava, not far from Bratislava. In 1932 he entered the College of Applied Arts in Prague, where he studied with Karel Dvořák and also with Josef Mařatka. His studies lasted until 1937. In 1938–1939 he worked in Paris, at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. In 1938 his work was shown at an exhibition of Slovak art in New York.

From Prague he brought back the experience of the Czech sculptural school, and from Paris the French tradition from Rodin to Maillol. In his early period he was affected by Baroque sculpture and by Antoine Bourdelle, a pupil of Rodin, and during his Paris stay he was drawn to Surrealist and anti-war, anti-fascist themes. His early works include “Girl with Drapery” (1939), “Poetry” (1939–1942), “Night” (1940), “Dream” (1941–1942) and “The Year Forty-Four” (1944). In the mid-1940s, working as assistant to Ján Koniarek, he pushed expression to a deliberate deformation of form: “Grief”, “The Mourning Woman” and “Old Man” are made this way.

From 1940 to 1949 Kostka taught modelling at the Slovak Technical University, which became the forerunner of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design. In 1949 he helped found that school in Bratislava and headed its department of figurative sculpture. With the sculptor Rudolf Pribiš he trained a whole generation of Slovak sculptors: Jozef Jankovič, Juraj Meliš, Marián Huba and Roller. For two years the sculptor Justín Hrčka worked as an assistant in his studio. He left the school under pressure from the authorities in the early 1970s; the exact year is hard to give, 1972 or 1973. From then on he worked as a freelance artist. In 1969–1970 Kostka was head of the Union of Slovak Visual Artists.

After 1945, and especially in the 1950s, he became occupied with monuments. The Victory monument for Bratislava (1946–1949) and the monument to the Slovak National Uprising in Partizánske (1946–1950) are multi-figure compositions whose silhouettes recall mountain peaks. The second is considered one of the best monuments on this theme.

In 1957 he took part in the São Paulo Biennial. At the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels he won a silver medal for the relief “On the River Bank”, and in the same year he exhibited at the Venice Biennale. The group “Gratitude” at the Slavín memorial in Bratislava dates from 1963, and “Slovak Spring”, the monument to Ľudovít Štúr in Modra, from 1964. In 1963 he also received the Cyprián Majerník Prize, and in 1967 he was named National Artist.

He understood the figure as Rodin did, but in the 1960s he increasingly reached for archetypal forms, following Brâncuși. It seems to me that his feeling for material is most evident in these works. He also drew a great deal: thousands of drawings of the nude, mostly in ink, formed the cycles “On the Embankment” (1962), “Black Nudes” (1963), “Black Days” (1965), “Masks” (1966), “Don Quixote” (1967) and “Ballads” (1965–1967). In 1966–1968 he travelled for study to England, France and Italy. Works from these years were shown at group exhibitions at the House of Art in Bratislava and at the Mánes in Prague in 1968–1969.

Kostka died on 30 September 1996 in Bratislava.