One could expect that these works of art were common shepherds’ pastime results in traditional sheep farming regions. We must disappoint you as in reality they were painted by miners from Central Slovakia mining region. The whole mining communities were involved in this form of art and having at least one piece of such painting was considered to be a matter of a family prestige and pride, including the most impoverished households.
"Salase" paintings, commonly also called "pastvy" (meaning pastures), depicted the life of shepherds’ community. Most popular were rectangular, 2-3 meters long, 20-30cm wide paper strips usually adorning shelves in room corners. Their practical function, as there was a one, was to disguise edges of a shelf holding Nativity Scene. Quite surprisingly, "salase" paintings were also being placed directly in mines, thus softening many times gloomy and harsh environment. However, and perhaps logically, their durability in such conditions was very limited.
This craft "was officially born" at the beginning of the 19th century, reaching its peak in the thirties of the 20th century. The "salase" paintings represent one of the most important features of Slovak bucolic art. Paintings were organised very generously, comprising a slew of various figures and motifs. To illustrate their unbelievable complexity we would like to mention just a few. For example, the country ones such as woods, rocky formations, pastures, mountain streams, greenery, flowers, shepherds’ huts, "kosiare" with their surroundings, chapels and foresters’ mountain huts. Inevitably, these scenes were completed with figures of shepherds engrossing themselves in various daily activities. Namely sheep flock guarding, warding off starving wolves, milking, dairy chores, sheep shearing, wood cutting, cheese processing, as well as more idyllic motifs of relaxing around the open fire, drinking, playing the traditional musical instruments, sleeping under the open sky. The whole scene was usually "adorned" by motifs of ever rushing animals such as dear, rabbits, squirrels, foxes, hovering eagles…Spatial arrangement of such a great number of individual figures and motifs required very advanced sense for composition as on a singular painting one could find up to 30 different human images and up to 100 various animal figures. Their spatial organisation would certainly represent a hard nut to crack for even an experienced "practice- hardened" professional.
Seemingly paradoxical is the fact that miners themselves such closely related their spiritual life to pastoral themes. However, one must realize that miners spent most of their lives underground, being deprived of such common "luxuries" of life as daily sunlight, warmth of sun rays penetrating the air, ever present greenery, etc. Therefore, perhaps, miners successfully managed to display the missing parts of their lives, the picturesque scenes so plentiful in their surroundings and almost permanently forbidden thanks to their work in complete darkness and hostility of the old mines.