Koloman Sokol

The founder of modern Slovak — and Mexican — printmaking, who lived to be a hundred. After a hard childhood he made his way to Eugen Krón's private school in Košice, then to Mallý in Bratislava and in 1925 to the Prague Academy under Max Švabinský and T. F. Šimon; a French government scholarship took him in 1932 to Paris to František Kupka. As a member of SČUG Hollar he exhibited in Mexico in 1937 and accepted the Mexican ministry's invitation: he founded the graphic department at the Escuela de las Artes del Libro and taught at the university in Mexico City until 1941.

In 1942 – 1946 he lived in New York; after his return he taught in Bratislava, but in 1948 he left for the USA for good — to Bryn Mawr near Philadelphia and finally to Tucson. His expressive prints and drawings of suffering and poverty belong to the summits of Slovak art; in 1991 he received the Order of T. G. Masaryk, in 2003 the Order of the White Double Cross, 1st class. Late in life he donated 48 works to Slovakia, which form the core of the Koloman Sokol Centre in Liptovský Mikuláš.