Oľga Danglová
Traditional embroidery from the village of Šoporňa is unique for its geometric patterns. Hermína Švihoríková was the first embroidery maker in the village who has used naïve figures in her work. She decorated her own wedding headband with an embroidered wedding parade scene. However, local women did not copy the embroidery type she had used. Her daughter Mária Kadúcová revived the embroidery in the 1950s when she made embroideries depicting rural life scenes such as wine harvesting, maize processing, harvest, harvest festival, Easter traditions and Christmas. Such embroideries were popular in the 1960 and in the 1970s. It was the period when Eleonóra Gálová, daughter of M. Kadúcová started to make such embroideries.
Eleonóra Gálová studied wood carving at the Arts and Crafts School at which she graduated in 1968. Unfortunately, she did not have a working place to do woodcarving. Later, she redirected her creative career to embroidered pictures. E. Gálová expanded, from the impulse of ÚĽUV, her most popular set of embroideries and added new ones such as Jánošík and his fellows. Originally, they were oblong pictures with strip compositions. E. Gálová came with fresh approach which involved one sequence from a scene inserted into the square background as a separate picture. Before, strip pictures were small. Now, the embroidered pictures are bigger and thicker. E. Gálová has started to make pictures for commercial purposes and supply them to shops in the 1990s. However, she has maintained contacts with the ÚĽUV.