Mária Hriešik Nepšinská
The best of jewellery art by Anton Cepka, one of the most renowned European artists, was on display in the Design Museum in Munich (Die Neue Sammlung) within a comprehensive retrospective exhibition. This selection of the artist’s works throughout the years was on view also in the Slovak National Gallery (SNG), within the Kinetic Jewellery exhibition. The exhibition’s Slovak version, comprising 284 of Cepka’s works, introduced, in addition to a representative selection of his jewellery, also his sculptures, designs and drawings. Having introduced the artist not only as the founder of Slovak and Czech jewellery, but as an exceptional creator of constructive-kinetic objects, SNG marked, through this exhibition, his 80th birthday. Cepka’s creative process is based on drawing. His ideas derive from his drawings, acquiring a more real appearance, shaping them, developing them, many a time experimenting with them. Thus, working on jewellery proper becomes a play for him; at times, the outcome is totally different from the original intention. As the selection of Anton Cepka’s art through the years in the Slovak National Gallery suggests, the exhibition is dominated by his jewellery. Nonetheless, for the artist, the emphasis on connecting a piece of art with space is equally important. For this reason, he, predominantly, choses art directly connected to architecture. His works for interior spaces as well as for exteriors are non-figurative compositions based on contrasting principles of clean, neat surfaces and richly structured networks.