Martin Benka

The founder of modern Slovak painting — and a man who built thirteen violins with his own hands. Born in Kostolište, he trained as a house painter in Hodonín, spent his journeyman years in Vienna and, thanks to the support of the journalist Jan Josef Langner, entered Alois Kalvoda's private landscape school in Prague. He lived in Prague until 1939, then settled in Martin; in 1940 – 1941 he headed the department of drawing and painting at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava.

His monumental, ornamentally stylised landscapes and figures of highlanders created an image of Slovakia that became the canon of national art; together with Fulla and Galanda he also laid the foundations of modern Slovak typography and book illustration. He received the Štefánik Provincial Prize (1937), the State Prize (1940) and, in 1953, the title of National Artist. He died in Malacky and is buried in the National Cemetery in Martin, where his work — the violins included — is kept by the Martin Benka Museum.