The President of the Slovak Rectors’ Conference, doc. Ing. Vladimír Hiadlovský, PhD., awarded, upon the proposal of the evaluation committee, Mgr. art. Natália Šimonová, ArtD., the 2025 SRC Award for Arts for her collection of artworks Metavrstvy (Metalevels), which holds transnational significance. The awarded collection was created during her university studies in the field of Arts at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica.
The SRC recognized Natália Šimonová’s work as original, artistically valuable, and socially relevant. Her artistic practice is characterized by the exploration of layers—contextual and conceptual, as well as painterly and material. The first refers to layers of public space, which she transfers onto canvases, transforming them into pictorial layers. In the second case, she reverses the process, bringing pictorial layers into public space, where she applies them as new structures, often referred to as “painting in the expanded field.” There, they become another layer of public space, both in terms of meaning and materiality. The “growth” of Šimonová’s painting evokes the natural processes through which public space changes, such as the material transformation caused by accumulating rust or by the addition and removal of layers of paint. These shifts—beyond natural material change—also hint at the transformations of human time, reflecting changing social moods and regimes. Through this form of painting, employing a kind of “deep mimesis,” or essential resemblance, her works contemplate the origins of the layers she studies, thereby revealing their meta-layers.
Šimonová’s approach highlights one of the foundational principles of artistic creation: the careful observation of nuances within the human environment and a focus on its intricate semantic layers. Because the author is a keen observer of changes in her surroundings, her analyses reveal many relationships that remain hidden to an untrained eye. In addition to uncovering them, she often points to their beauty, which becomes visible only through deeper understanding. Natália Šimonová works with combinations of classical and non-classical media, traditional and unconventional artistic techniques and processes, and especially rust, which has become characteristic of her work.
Natália Šimonová is an important representative of contemporary Slovak painting. Through her combination of innovative materials, precise painting, and exploration of space and memory, she bridges academic, aesthetic, and social themes.
The 2025 SRC Award for Arts was presented during a public artistic event organized by the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica—the opening concert of the 8th edition of the international conducting competition Encounter Above the Choral Score, on November 21, 2025 in Banská Bystrica.
The members of the evaluation committee for the SRC Award for Arts are distinguished artists and educators active in the field of Arts at Slovak higher education institutions: doc. Mária Heinzová, ArtD.; prof. Stanislav Stankoci, akad. mal.; and PhDr. MgA. Yvonne Vavrová, PhD.
We extend our heartfelt congratulations to the awardee!
Photo: Maximiliána Gontková
More information:
- Press release: Cenu SRK za umenie 2025 získala maliarka Natália Šimonová (in Slovak language)
- Medailón Mgr. art. Natálie Šimonovej, ArtD. (in Slovak language)
- Photogallery
- SRC in Media: Teraz.sk, Bleskovky.sk, Bystricoviny.sk, (in Slovak language)