according to Ivan Stefanek, Picture, approx. 31 x 42 cm, 36 colours, 9 stitches/1 cm, Gobelin
Ivan Stefanek was born in Hrastovsko in 1942. By profession he is a merchant and since 1965 he has devoted himself to painting. The naive painting served us as a model for this tapestry. Where does the urge for the Naive come from anyway?
The longing for a better reality, the hope of recalling the Sunday of life in wonderfully simple pictures to normal everyday life may have prompted the naive painters to reach for their brush and, carefree and spontaneous, far removed from style and academic knowledge, to put their colours and forms on paper. It is not the technical perfection but the impartiality of the representation that makes the value of the naive painting. In an age in which technology dominates mankind to an ever-increasing extent and the general artistic representation lies in abstractions, man seeks to rediscover the originality of his being. This prerequisite had to be given first of all in order to let the naive attention and recognition be found.
For the most part, naive painting comes from rural areas; this is where the motivation comes from. It is the rural everyday life, from which the farmer wrests his bread in hard work. Therefore, most of the peasant painters come from the Slavic cultural area. They can draw from their old folk art and without knowing it, the reflection of a landscape of time is created, in which man and nature were still a unity of feelings. Original in the gallery Orober, Duisburg.
