Ester Šimerová-Martinčeková, nee Fridriková (23/01/1909, Bratislava – 07/08/2005, Liptovský Mikuláš) was a painter and a significant personality in Slovak modern visual art. She started her art studies at the Gustav Mallý private school in Bratislava; from 1927 – 1932 she studied at various art schools in Paris. She was mostly influenced by her education and the works of A. Exter. From 1939 she lived with her husband in Pilsen. Her exhibition at the Society of West Bohemian Artists in Pilsen in 1941 was closed and declared “entartete Kunst” (Degenerate Art). Her husband was executed in 1943 for helping the perpetrators of the assassination of the Deputy Reich-Protector Reinhard Heydrich.
Šimerová-Martinčeková received her artistic education in cubism and constructivism including the famous high-level visual culture of French modernists. It was in these formally refined expressions of her work that we can find her experiments with form and her affection of cultivated artistic decorativism. After her return to Slovakia, there was a shift in her work from civilized-intellectual phenomena to an interest in nature, natural shapes and typical mountain landscape with all their attributes. She respected the principles of constructivism as being the intellectually highest values for paintings; therefore she ranged between cubism-toned compositions and stylized, almost abstract works tinged with a delicate poeticism or cultural decoration. Her works show a consistent level of quality, an intellectual interest in visual expressive forms; her tireless experimentation brought new artistic ideas. Her works surpass the ordinary depictions of everyday objects with their artistic poetry and become a part of her catalogue of works giving a distinctive and authentic artistic statement from an extraordinary painter. On the stamp is depicted painting Chess composition (1931) from the collection of the Slovak National Gallery and FDC presents the work Folk Madonna (1948) from the collection of the Bratislava City Gallery.
                                                                                                                                                                                  Zsófia Kiss-Szemán