Rudolf Dzurko (1941–2013): You can only hear the grass grow with me

Curator: Miroslav Kleban
Duration of the exhibition: 15/11/2024 – 30/3/2025
Hall C, Hlavná 27, Košice'

A native of Eastern Slovakia of Roma origin, the artist Rudolf Dzurko is among the almost unknown and undeveloped artists in Slovakia. He belongs to the generation of authors of post-war art, who created a special author's handwriting in the form of a special technique of crushed glass, which he used to create his plastic assemblages. In the context of Romani culture, Dzurko literally represents a phenomenon whose work is a separate chapter of artistic expressions within Czechoslovak art and has no similar equivalent. Although probably due to the absence of an academic art education, Dzurko considers himself a naive artist, this exhibition and research project also has the ambition of using an art-historical revision and re-evaluation of his work to point out the connection with surrealism and magical realism, with the courage to compare it to, for example, the work of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo .

The artistic work of Rudolf Dzurk is known primarily in the Czech environment, from the beginning of the 70s his name began to resonate mainly in various ethnographic and ethnographic exhibitions that focused on the Roma minority. Dzurko devoted himself to his artistic activity in addition to his civilian job, so it is remarkable that he left behind a large artistic legacy, a large part of which is today in the collections of the Museum of Roma Culture in Brno, which is the main cooperating organization in the realization of Rudolf Dzurko's first solo exhibition in the East Slovak Gallery and in Slovakia at all.

Rudolf Dzurko's name is also known in the political and cultural underground in connection with some of the signatories of Charter 77, whom Dzurko hid during the persecution. Rudolf Dzurk's first solo exhibition presents dozens of works created using the technique of ground glass and wooden figurative sculptures, which refer to Roma culture and traditions. The exhibition is a continuation of the program of scientific research activities of re-evaluating Central European art history and rehabilitating hitherto unprocessed or little-known authors from the point of view of inclusion and revision of art-historical contexts.