Plaveč – week #4 – The Native of Plaveč

Valérie de Saint-Do – The Native of Plaveč

You won’t walk for long in Plaveč before noticing Mario Varga, always dressed in black, with his long-dark hair and his look of hard rock musician. And often, you will see him alone, quietly sitting and drawing everything around, using mostly coasters as basic material. He draws quickly, extremely precisely, and almost obsessively, on the same subject : Native Americans.
It was not always his topic. He used to draw at first about football players, then about soldiers, guns and weapons. Her sister, an amateur artist, helped him at first and gave him skills. Then he discovered Native Americans from books, among them the story of Wounded Knee. He became particularly interested by tribes living in the forests and by natives from Dakota (Lakotas, Dakotas and Nakotas/Sioux).
He likes their way of life, their culture, their tribal dances, their ways of hunting.
His collection of drawings is quite impressive, showing an deep knowledge and intensive work of documentation. Traditional clothes, weapons, feathered crowns, buffalos, horses, well-known warriors, everything is extremely precise, with sharp lines and a subtile attention to details.
An exhibition of his drawings in Bratislava, in July 2002, was a great success. He diden’t show his works since, but this summer Lujza and Bea have prepared a group exhibition of Mario Varga and Paul Maquaire which involves some collaborative pieces they have worked on together during our stay here.