Icons in Czechoslovakia

This volume with its 60 superb colour plates draws attention to the magnificent icons to be found in Czechoslovakia, but which today are half-forgotten by the general public. The work is divided into two groups: the first is a selection of typical icons from the 15th to the 17th centuries in the National Gallery of Prague. The second group consists of over forty icons belonging to various museum collections and villages in the Carpathian region in Eastern Slovakia. The influence of city culture in these villages is very small, so that what developed is “folk-art” icon painting, with lively colours, simplification of composition, strong stylisation and rich ornamentation, characteristics often absent in Russian and Greek icon painting.