Zolo Palugyay

An expressive lyricist of Slovak modernism whose life ended on the ridge of Ďumbier. The son of minor gentry from Bodice near Liptovský Mikuláš, he was already painting as a soldier on the Italian front; he studied at the academies of Budapest (Ede Balló) and Kraków (Władysław Jarocki), in Berlin and Hamburg, and in 1924 – 1926 at Hans Hofmann's school in Munich. On his return he joined the Union of Slovak Artists and roamed Turiec, Orava, Horehronie and Liptov with Janko Alexy and M. A. Bazovský in search of the image of Slovakia's most characteristic regions; in 1930 he studied with Bazovský in France, Switzerland and Germany.

In September 1935 he set out from the Štefánik Hut on a hike from which he never returned; his remains were found only in the summer of 1936 below a rock face — with the rucksack in which his drawings had survived. His balladic landscapes and figures in folk costume are today held by the Slovak National Gallery; a memorial stands to him in his native Bodice.