Miroslav Ronai

Life and work

He was born on 22 September 1957 in Kremnica. From 1972 to 1976 he studied flat and relief metal engraving at the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Kremnica under Milan Ormandík and Terézia Brezányová Kružlicová. He lives in Kremnica and works in relief sculpture, but above all on medals and coin designs. His medals are held in private collections and in the Slovak National Gallery. For his milestone birthday in 2017 the Vojtech Löffler Museum in Košice held the exhibition Coins and Medals. His son Branislav Ronai (b. 1985) is a medallist at the Kremnica Mint; in 2024 they jointly made a medal for the centenary of the death of Štefan Schwartz, with the obverse by Branislav and the reverse by Miroslav.

Coins and medals

He signs his coins with the initials MR or the letter R. He has won numerous competitions for commemorative coins, among them the competition for the Slovak 2 euro coin of 2011. He was already designing coins and medals in the Czechoslovak period; however, the available sources disagree on the attribution of individual Czechoslovak federal circulation coins, which are therefore not listed here.

From the work in the AUREA range

The AUREA range includes his undated silver-plated bronze medal Václav Havel for the first anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, catalogued to 1990, 40 mm. The portrait of President Havel from the period immediately after November 1989 documents Ronai's work for Czechoslovak clients before the division of the state.