Arnold Peter Weisz-Kubínčan

The Expressionist of Orava, whose work survived the war in a suitcase in an attic. He was born into a Jewish family in Prussian Ujście and spent his childhood in Dolný Kubín; in 1913 – 1916 he studied sculpture at the School of Applied Arts in Budapest and, after the front, continued in Berlin amid the Expressionist milieu. From 1923 he lived in Dolný Kubín, from 1934 in Martin; he adopted the name Kubínčan as a declaration of love for Orava, whose mountains and people were his world.

From 1942 he hid in the mountains from the deportations; he perished in 1945 during transport to a concentration camp or shortly afterwards. Nearly three hundred paintings, drawings and prints that he had hidden in Martin were saved by his companion Zorka Kahan-Ring, and her daughter donated them to the Slovak National Gallery, which presented them in 2019 at the exhibition The Artist's (Heavy) Luggage. His work ranks among the most original expressions of Slovak interwar art.