From the blacksmith craftsman to the sculptor

Perfect mastering handicraft side of the profession should be taken for granted with each craftsman. It is especially essential for a sculptor who works with such a material as metal. Ján Kondač is a craftsman whose specific feature is the link between handicraft and artistic imagination and this link influences his work positively. He studied blacksmith craft at the Art Industry Comprehensive School in Kremnica in 1979. After he had finished his studies, for several years he was gaining experience in metal processing working for distinguished sculptors in their studios. He was improving his handicraft skill and, at the same time, he made an attempt at his own metal works. From 1979 to 1985 he was working for ÚĽUV. Here, he was producing small series of 5 up to 30 pieces of forging plastics with human and animal figures which were the themes in folk works. His achievements were excellent in this particular work and his forging plastics became representative works for ÚĽUV where tradition and modern esthetics were mingled harmoniously. Today he talks about them with a feeling of satisfaction: I enjoyed the work and I learnt a lot. I only had basic blasksmith craft tools a hammer and an anvil. I lacked a drill, so I had to pierce the sheets like they used to do it in the Middle Ages. When I had made a mistake of any kind, I was forced to throw the piece of work away because I did not have a welding machine to mend it. I learnt how to master details neatly by repeating the theme and using only riveting and forging, as well as how to make up handicraft jokes and to improve the graphic detail. With all the experience and skills in metal processing, Ján Kondač started studying sculpture at the University of Art in Bratislava in 1985, which was slightly later than his peers. He finished in 1991 when the atmosphere was freer and suitable for independent work as well as, it seems so, full of new impetus in blacksmith craft. After the revolution, reconstruction of the shabby architecture in the centre of Bratislava was started to a greater extent. The works involved metal elements, too, and skillfull craftsmen with respect to the historical monuments were required. At he beginning of the 1990s, Ján Kondač got an opportunity to restore historical bars, to make imitations, but, at the same time, to realize his own designes for pieces in historical architecture, for instance the gate of the Ministry of Culture, Grassalkovič Palace, Erdödy Palace, Mindzsenty Studio, St. Elizabeths Church and Nunnery. To manage such kind of work, it was essential to get to know old blacksmith techologies and grifs, which Kondač had learnt directly from the old masters. Restoring requires selecting technologies so as they stay distinguishable after restoring is finished. The first thing to be done is to clean the dirt in order to see the details. Next task is to dismantle the work into the smallest possible parts and to restore it before the parts are assembled again. I can see how the work was produced. Historical pieces have a strict logic because people did not experiment in the old times. One needs to realize what kind of tools and material the masters involved and to decide on the authentic action. While Ján Kondač is, more or less, a humble follower of the old masters and their left tradition, as for historical architecture, he applies his own designs in works for contemporary architecture, especially private residences. He cannot conceal his feelings for sculpture (e.g. the gate with an owl), though he uses the legacy of historical themes in his works. These works are on order, and therefore it is necessary to respect both the clients and the aschitecturers conception. Since he has done a number of such works, he is allowed to generalize: Todays architecturers ideas about blacksmith craft are linked to historical inspiration and this link is even more distinct with clients. They expect forging and hammering themes of plants, threading and so on, which are original themes with guarantee. I have not come into contact with a requirement for modern bars. Handicraft must respect exact purpose, traditional forms and technologies. Kondač manages to take advantage of this miscellaneous collection in his sculpture work with no limit. He often experiments with technology and combines materials as if he wanted to adjust all the limitations of the neat handicraft in functional works. Over the last decade, Kondač has proved expressing possibilities of different methods of metal processing, even by applying industrial technologies. For some time, he has given up using some methods, for instance painting the metal, plastics with burnished surface, or he has just put them aside, perhaps for different continiuty. As far as time continiuty is concerned, a particular moment in his plastics in vertical connecting smaller sculptures from different periods of his work. The following finish, that is relized by chemical means, introduces a new image of past experience with new form in time and space. By using his own method of chemical destruction, Kondač enters a wide range of expressivelly corrugated constructions and colorfull characters. The origin of his method has a lot to do with restoring work. While he was looking for appropriate ways, he got to know chemicals used for removing old dirt and these chemicals can reveal beautiful original materials under the layers. He also used this experience to work more carefully with designing the sculpture surfaces and forging artifacts. Kondač´s characteristic themes are a bird and its figure which overlap all his independent work and even have connection with his beginnings. For Kondač, the bird and its figure are the themes with deep symbolism and with wide scale for artistic design. One appreciates this in many variations from linear birds made of forging wire at the beginning of the 1980s to shapeless figures made of drawing metal at the end of 1990s. One can only sense the vague figure in those mentioned as the last. His latest themes are moving objects mobiles, which are paradoxically expresing the ability of movement of the metal, and meditating systems where a forging plastic is a part of a bigger unit. In spite of Kondačs own directions in his sculpture work, he does not lose contact with the world of handicraft and annually he attends the Blacksmith Craft Days where followers of genuine craft meet together because they care about the standard of artistic blacksmith craft.