Cyprián Majerník

The most tragic figure of the Generation of 1909 — a Slovak painter who, in Prague, created the most powerful artistic testimony to the horrors of war. After business school in Košice he trained at Gustáv Mallý's private school in Bratislava and at the Prague Academy under Josef Loukota and Jakub Obrovský; he stayed in Prague for good and, with Ján Mudroch, Ján Želibský, Jakub Bauernfreund and Endre Nemes, formed the core of the Generation of 1909. A short stay in Paris (1932) opened up to him the world of Chagall and de Chirico.

Refugees, exiles, Don Quixote and the Riders — the painting that won him the Umělecká beseda annual prize in 1942 — bear witness to an age he lived through with advancing illness. He died in Prague on 4 July 1945, only weeks after the liberation; in 1946 he was represented at the exhibition Trente ans de peinture tchécoslovaque at the Orangerie in Paris, in 1991 President Havel awarded him the Order of T. G. Masaryk in memoriam, and the Bratislava City Gallery mounted a major exhibition for his centenary (2009).