Sediaci mužský akt en face 

Jozef Hanula produced this sanguine drawing of a seated male nude in what was then Austria-Hungary. Drawings like this one are both studies and cultural documents. On one level, this is an academic exercise: a life drawing made to hone the artist’s skills in anatomy and proportion. But in another sense, we see embodied here a set of social and cultural ideas about masculinity, the body, and art itself. Consider the cultural and institutional context in which Hanula was working: the art academy. These institutions, backed by the state, played a crucial role in shaping artistic production and taste. Life drawing was central to academic training, instilling a specific canon of beauty and idealization rooted in classical antiquity. By studying Hanula's drawing, alongside other visual and textual sources, we can better understand how academic art shaped ideas of national identity and social values in central Europe at the turn of the century.