2020 – 2024, studied at the Arts Faculty of the Technical University in Košice, in the Painting Studio led by Doz. Oto Hudec. Since 2024, has studied at the  Faculty of Fine Arts at VUT in Brno (FaVU), in Painting Studio 3. He has exhibited his works at several solo and group exhibitions in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, including art festivals. In 2026 he is a finalist in the Painting Competition. 

Maroš Bavoľár, a debutant in the competition, works mainly in the media of drawing and painting. Through his art he comes to terms with his own identity, while at the same time exploring broader questions of sexuality, corporality and gender equality. He is interested in the way that masculinity is formed by social stereotypes, family expectations and cultural norms. Bavoľár addresses these issues with a broad overview and irony; themes of vulnerability and fragility are often at the centre of interest. Via figural painting, he reflects on general ideas of what we regard as ‘manly’, confronting them with his personal experience and with the broader context of collective queer identity. His work emerges from intimate self-reflection, while simultaneously preserving a certain detachment – for this reason also, it qualifies as an exceptionally sincere and open commentary.  Self-presentation, and his own corporality, become an instrument of critical reflection in his paintings; the artist inserts himself in situations which reveal the tension between social expectations and individual experience.  Bavoľár’s paintings open a space for a more sensitive and pluralist thinking about contemporary male identity.

   His final entry The Secret Lives of Men (Moment of Revelation) (2024) captures an introspective moment of surprise, fleeting about-turn and disclosure. A trio of naked male figures is situated in an uncertain, fluid space. They appear in their most vulnerable position – as if caught in an intimate moment, whose significance remains deliberately open. What are they saying? What kind of hidden stories do they have? Bavoľár consciously avoids the traditional heroic portrayal of the male nude. Instead of the idealised body, he offers an image of corporality stripped of the deposits of dominance and self-conscious control. The figures do not show performative strength; they uncover the softness, fragility and unsureness of male identity. Precisely in this tension between attractiveness and vulnerability, a space emerges for another form of masculinity. The viewer becomes an observer of the situation, but this voyeur-like gaze does not function as a disturbance of intimacy. The male body ceases to be a symbol of power and becomes a space for psychological experience – inner states oscillating between desire, melancholy and excitement. Bavoľár’s  work thematises a form of masculinity that does not proceed from dominance, but rather from ability to admit one’s own vulnerability.