TRANSFORMING ART

A fascinating story of an artist who found his voice in the worst of circumstances. As we celebrate the Easter  mystery, here is a story of a man who knew what death and life were about. 

LADISLAV ZABORSKY, a Slovakian artist who was imprisoned  for his work, was born in 1921 in the small town of Tisovec. He studied at the grammar school in Banská Bystrica where his drawing teacher Krákora took notice of him and recommended him for further studies.

Then he attended the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava, the Department of Drawing and Painting where such personalities as Ján Mudroch, Gustáv Mallý and Martin Benka taught him.

After finishing university studies he acted as a drawing and descriptive geometry teacher at the grammar school in Martin. He used to tell his students about his faith. Eventually, he was arrested for his religious activities. His crime? He painted Christ as a worker in 1949.  His other religious art was labeled corrupt Though there was given no accusation or judgment in his case, he was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment.

 He experienced interrogation, intimidation, demanding prison conditions and threatening, too. He spent five months in solitary confinement where he wrote thirty poems depicting his feelings and talks to God. Every event that had touched him somehow later appeared in his work and his work was often influenced by the gospel.

While imprisoned, Ladislav felt as if his hands were nailed to the cross because he could not paint but could only seek God in the depths of his soul.  He felt as if he was crucified because he could not walk where he wanted to. In poems written after his release, Ladislav expressed the deep spiritual transformation which occurred during his imprisonment. The result of his inner crucifixion meant he no longer fulfilled his own desires but only sought God and His will.

“God has saved me many times. He was really merciful to me. He turned all my difficulties, illnesses, even my imprisonment into great spiritual values. He is able to turn human muck into spiritual treasure.”

After serving half of his sentence, he was released on Christmas Eve 1957. In 1958 he created one of his most famous paintings, "Descent from the Cross", which symbolized his coming back from the “cross”, the prison.

When he was finally released, he was still affected by the consequences of persecution; he wasn’t able to get involved in society and his employment opportunities were minimal, thus he illustrated books for children and applied his mind to landscape painting.

During the period of normalization he decorated 25 churches with the Stations of the Cross. Between years 1968 and 1969 he lived in France with his family and studied sacral art - architecture and interior decoration of churches. His mission in life was to spread joy, Christian optimism and religious belief in eternal life.

Ladislav and his wife Gabriela, who stood faithfully by his side, had three children: Vladimir, Terezia, and Mary. 

“It was hard for my family. My children were between two and seven years old when I was imprisoned. My wife, a French and Latin teacher, had to work at night as a charwoman. She used to spend the whole day with our children and during the night, she was cleaning the orphanage for five hundred crowns per month. She spent only a couple of hours there. It wasn’t possible to live on it. If there hadn’t been good people who helped them, they would have died of hunger."

 He died in 2016 at age age of 95.

Light was the central theme of  his art,  not only the light that floods the landscape, or the light that is hidden in the soul of a man, but the Light that is permeates our life journey.  His paintings are  bright, yet  almost mono-colored - either bright orange, or deep blue.

“The substance of my work is the experience of God transferred into my heart (…) Art that seeks truth and beauty is the anticipation of eternity.”

My hands were crucified,
I cannot do what I like.
My legs were crucified,
I cannot go where I want.
Thus was I likened
to Your Son,
so that in me might be born
a new person
who will not fulfill his own desire,
but who seeks Your desire.
Hence I am suspended on this cross,
but salvation quickly approaches me.

~ By Ladislav Záborský (poems written from prison)
translated from Slovak by Harold B. Segel