The Miloš Alexander Bazovský Gallery in Trenčín becomes the setting for an exceptional exhibition by one of the most significant Slovak artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The exhibition Stano Filko: Color and System, Face and Reverse, open to the public from 13 February to 18 April 2026, offers a profound and sensorially intense insight into the work of an artist who perceived art as a path to understanding both the world and himself.
Stano Filko (1937–2015), a native of Veľká Hradná near Trenčín, is among the most distinctive figures of Slovak neo-avant-garde art.
The curatorial concept by Boris Ondreička focuses on Filko’s understanding of the painting not as a flat surface, but as a physical object and a spatial experience. As the artist himself intended, the selection allows for a literal entry into his paintings — not only from their front sides, but exceptionally also from their reverse sides, which were often equally important to Filko. The principle of “two sides of the same coin” is fundamental to his work and reveals the way he connected analytical thinking with intuition.
“Filko’s work may be more relevant today than ever before, precisely because it points to the need to connect rationality with sensitivity,” says curator Boris Ondreička. Many of the exhibited works are being presented to the public for the very first time, further underscoring the exceptional nature of the project.
The exhibition also enters into a symbolic dialogue with the painter Miloš Alexander Bazovský, whose name the gallery bears. The presentation includes works that directly engage with Bazovský. The project thus creates a strong and concentrated experience of color, painting, and the image understood as object and space — from responses to ‘classical’ modernism, through neo-avant-garde experiments, to contemporary forms of artistic thinking. At the same time, it offers an inspiring view of an artist’s life as a process of constant development, searching, and “becoming.”
The project Stano Filko: Color and System, Face and Reverse (13 February – 18 April 2026) offers a unique opportunity to enter the world of an artist who understood art as a tool of knowledge, freedom, and continual transformation — in line with the ambitions of the European Capital of Culture Trenčín 2026.
