Ernest Zmeták

A painter whose lifelong love was Italy and whose lifelong theme was Slovak folk culture. Born in Nové Zámky, he was to enter the Prague Academy under Willi Nowak in 1938, but the school was closed; he therefore graduated from the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts in the department of monumental painting under Vilmos Aba-Novák, Béla Kontuly and István Szőnyi. He is the author of the mosaic in the tympanum of the Primate's Palace in Bratislava.

He undertook numerous study trips yet never yielded to passing trends — his townscapes, landscapes and figures are held together by firm drawing and a sense of monumentality. As a collector and patron he initiated the Ernest Zmeták Art Gallery in Nové Zámky (1979), to which he and his wife donated a collection of European art; in 2004 he received the Pribina Cross, 1st class, from President Schuster.