Alojz Petráš was a painter, draughtsman, textile artist and monumentalist. He was born on 6 January 1934 in Prievidza. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava in the department of monumental painting under Prof. Peter Matejka. He devoted himself to chamber and sacred art in various techniques — oil painting, watercolours, interior installations, and the creation of objects and sculptures from wood. Due to the emotionality of his work, the exceptional quality of his expression and its philosophical subtext, he gained recognition both at home and abroad.

His subjects were primarily biblical stories and the Gospels, in which he found a parallel to human existence and fate. However much a person (the Human Fly) may wish to resist this fate — even to blaspheme, and in the author’s conception thereby symbolically to scourge Christ — their individual fate is merely part of an all-encompassing divine concept. In this sense, God’s children are not only those who are socially successful and accepted, but also people on the margins of society, to whom the author symbolically offers the divine call — the Bell — including a painting of a bell tower in his cycle of works depicting the homeless. The author frequently depicted folk motifs — shepherding, the harvest, feasts — which he often combined with sacred motifs (the Virgin Mary as a reaper, Christ as a farmer, shepherd, a vintner tending God’s vineyard and elevating wine to a symbol of his blood).

The Sculpture of Peace (1973) is a 9-metre artwork on Sama Chalupku Street, near the primary school buildings. It consists of a metal pillar and sheet-metal prisms representing mine shafts. After dark, the shafts are illuminated from below by spotlights. At the top are doves as a symbol of peace and miners’ hammers as a symbol of mining in the Upper Nitra region, serving as a reminder that Prievidza is a mining town.

The sculpture was damaged over time and, on the initiative of young Prievidza resident František Šiller, who lives on the Píly housing estate, the work was restored. The City of Prievidza incorporated this artwork into its property, funded its restoration and the revitalisation of the surrounding area.

Alojz Petráš is also the author of the mosaic on the low wall in front of the entrance to the building of the General Directorate of Hornonitrianske bane Prievidza, a.s. on Matice slovenskej Street.

He died on 23 April 2016 in Bojnice and is buried in Prievidza.