Village life from a frog's perspective

A good painter sometimes does not need a school to paint what he wants, nor to share a gold medal with Salvador Dali one day. With more than 350 exhibitions and around 2.500 paintings, Martin Jonas, a naive painter from the southern Banat town of Kovačice, proved exactly that. Everyone came to Jonas' studio - from great men and statesmen such as King Juan Carlos, François Mitterrand and Mitsotakis, to the world stars of the Rolling Stones, Alain Delon, Anne Girardeau, Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, and there is also a picture of Ursula Anders sitting in his wing.

The association of painters Naiva Art Kult from Kovačica marks the hundredth anniversary of Jonas' birth with an exhibition Inspirations from Martin Jonas in the Belgrade Cultural Institution "Parobrod". From the large permanent exhibition of his paintings in Kovačica, the Association selected 118 works for this exhibition.

This is Jonash's biggest exhibition so far. The author of the exhibition and the president of the Association, Boško Nedeljkov, says that they intended to show more exhibits, but there was no space. With the exhibition, he says, they wanted to show Jonas' versatility and cover the most significant period of his creativity - from the sixties to the late nineties.

photo: promo

The story goes that Jonas started drawing in the early days of his childhood, that he completed five grades of primary school, that his father was a tannery worker and that he dyed skins and furs with colors made from animal pigments, and that little Jonas secretly took them from him and painted them baskets, scarves, walls, barns. He started painting more seriously when he returned from the army in 1949, in his twenties. He acquires canvas and painter's colors and goes to the nature, the field, the street - that's what his first paintings were called: On the street, In the pasture, In late autumn. He also painted peasants back then, but they still didn't have huge hands and feet, much bigger than their heads and shoulders, which is one of the main features of Jonas's painting - says Nedeljkov.

In the fall of 1951, he joined the Fine Art Section founded by the doyens of Kovačić naïve Martin Paluška, Jan Sokol, Michal Bireš and Vladimir Boboš, and already the following year he had his first solo exhibition. It was organized on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the arrival of Slovaks in Kovačica. Today, 222 years have passed since that arrival - notes Nedeljkov.

The story goes that at an exhibition in the early fifties, Jonas complained to Professor Stojan Trumić from Pancevo, who shaped the most famous naïves from our area, that he had painted his peasant's hands larger than would be natural. Trumic told him to continue like that because it represents his originality. After that, Jonas increased them a little more and became recognizable and special because of that.

photo: promo

Many people wrote that Jonas painted hard-working peasants whose limbs were hypertrophied due to hard work, but, Nedeljkov explains, this is not entirely true. "From my acquaintance with Jonas, I know that the reason he painted oversized limbs was his view of a boy from a frog's perspective. He had to sit under the table while grandma, grandpa, dad and mom ate dinner. They went to the fields, they needed much more quality food to eat and go to work, while the children were left with what was a little lower quality. That's how the jokes came about, with adults explaining why it's good: 'If you eat the legs, you'll run faster', 'if you eat the wings, you'll be able to fly', 'if you eat the head, you'll be smarter'."

From a frog's perspective, Jonas, hidden under the table in his father's shop, watched the cracked palms of his father, neighbors and relatives after hard labor. That is why there is truth in the fact that he painted oversized limbs in order to emphasize that for him the peasant is at the center of all events, because that peasant needs big and strong arms and legs to be able to do what he needs to do, while, on the other hand, for him nobody asks for his opinion, that's why his head is small.

In some of his paintings, animals also have hypertrophied limbs – horses have large hooves and small heads. The cause of these disproportions is, as with humans, the frog's perspective from which little Jonas observed the world around him. Nedeljkov points to one of the paintings from the exhibition, The end of the field, from 1990, which is an example of Jonas' horses with large hooves. Nedeljkov notes that she was found in Italy and that she was returned to the country.

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Jonas' paintings are dominated by earthy colors, which he used to represent his surroundings. He painted peasants working in the fields (Setva, Harvesting corn), they feed poultry, during sowing, in moments of rest (Jeu, Friends, Conversation, To health, Sunday), while sleeping under a tree, they play (You're playing the flute, musician) in the home (At the table, Egg viewing), in a stable, in a prison, during all seasons. He made portraits of peasants (Portrait of a woman, Portrait of a neighbor) with rough facial features, woodcut, linocut, graphics, chalk on paper, prints on canvas, oil on canvas, wax colors, pastel.

In many paintings, such as Woman with Geese, the animals are transparent. Nedeljkov says that Jonas personally told him the reason for that. "When Jonas was a child, there were hundreds of thousands of geese in Vojvodina. The French came and bought those geese for their national specialties. Then many people in Kovačica and the surrounding villages raised geese. They were on the streets in all directions. As the geese, and some other animals, began to disappear, he wanted to show through this transparency that they are imaginary and that they are no longer there."

The house where Jonas lived was turned into an endowment in 2014, and was bought by the Slovak Office for Slovaks in the Diaspora. It is covered with ornamented ceramic tiles typical of the homes of Banat Slovaks. On the walls of the room where he painted there are photos, medals, diplomas, and on the shelves numerous magazines, newspapers, books, professional literature that talk about his creativity and the history of the Slovak community in Vojvodina.

There are still naive painters in Kovačica today, says Nedeljkov, and they paint the world around them, but "they can no longer see threshing machines, plowing with old plows. That is why there is a greater emphasis on landscapes in contemporary naïve than before. This can be seen in the works of Sava Stojkov, who in one part of his work was dedicated to the peasant, but later turned to the landscape". Nedeljkov also mentions Dobrosav Milojević, who is one of the best contemporary naive painters in Serbia and who had more than 450 exhibitions. But, "it will still take a long time", concludes Nedeljkov, "for a painter to appear who will reach the fame of Martin Jonas".