Umetnostnozgodovinski inštitut Franceta Steleta |

CONTENT

DISSERTATIONES

Tina Košak,

Dame na tržnici. Štiri upodobitve stojnic iz Narodne galerije v Ljubljani in Alte Galerie v Gradcu

Ladies at the Market. A Series of Four Market Scenes in the National Gallery of Slovenia in Ljubljana and the Alte Galerie of the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria

Claudia-Alexandra Schwaighofer,

Razmišljanja o poznavalstvu v 18. stoletju. Risba kot umetniški dokument

Die Zeichnung als künstlerisches Dokument. Überlegungen zur Kennerschaft im 18. Jahrhundert

Matej Klemenčič,

Nekaj novosti o delu beneškega baročnega kiparja Jacopa Contierija (in notica o Francescu Cabianci)

Some New Information about the Work of the Venetian Baroque Sculptor Jacopo Contieri (and a Note on Francesco Cabianca)

Marco Leoni,

Dal restauro della chiesa della Madonna del Rezzo di Porlezza. Nuove precisazioni sull’attività di Giulio Quaglio

Restavratorska dela v cerkvi Madonna del Rezzo v Porlezzi. Novosti o delovanju Giulia Quaglia

Nataša Ivanović,

Slikar Lovro Janša v primežu razmer na dunajski likovni akademiji ob prelomu 18. stoletja

The Painter Lovro Janša in the Grip of the Circumstances at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna at the Turn of the 18^th Century

Andrej Smrekar,

Pozabljena slika Ivana Groharja

An Overlooked Painting by Ivan Grohar

Beti Žerovc,

Prvoobhajanke, Roza Klein in gole ženske v slikarstvu Mateja Sternena

Girls at First Communion, Roza Klein and Naked Women in the Painting of Matej Sternen

Marjeta Ciglenečki,

Vera Blumenau Simonič v šoli Antona Ažbeta

Vera Blumenau Simonič in the School of Anton Ažbe

MISCELLANEA

Andrej Smrekar,

Perellovi grafiki v Narodni galeriji

Two Perelle Prints in the National Gallery of Slovenia

Ana Lavrič,

Portret knezoškofa Adama Friedricha von Seinsheima pri novomeških frančiškanih

Portrait of Prince-Bishop Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim in the Franciscan Monastery of Novo mesto

Alenka Vodnik,

Terenski zapiski Franceta Steleta in njihova (ne)vloga pri obravnavanju slovenskega srednjeveškega stenskega slikarstva

France Stelè's Fieldwork Notes and Their (In)Significance in the Study of Slovenian Medieval Wall Paintings

DOCUMENTA

Maja Lozar Štamcar,

Društvo oblikovalcev Slovenije – prvo desetletje (1951–1961)

The Slovenian Society of Designers – Its First Decade (1951–1961)

RECENSIONES

Nenad Makuljević,

Od Narodnega doma do Narodne galerije(ur. Mojca Jenko, Monika Pemič)

SUMMARIES

Tina KOŠAK

Ladies at the Market. A Series of Four Market Scenes in the National Gallery of Slovenia in Ljubljana and the Alte Galerie of the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria

In the collection European Paintings of the National Gallery of Slovenia there are two paintings, Noble Couple at the Market and Lady at the Market, “companion pieces” painted after the mid-17^th century by an anonymous Flemish artist. The paintings which depict ladies buying a melon at a vegetable and fruit stall once belonged to a series of four market scenes in the collection of Counts Attems in Palais Attems in Graz, Austria. Whereas two of the paintings from this series have been held in the Alte Galerie of the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz (formerly Landesbildergalerie) since the end of the 19^th century, the other two – i. e. the Ljubljana pieces – are documented to have been housed in Palais Attems in 1923; they were imported to Slovenia before the Second World War.

As has already been established in earlier literature, in terms of composition the four fruit and vegetable stalls from the Ljubljana and the Graz collections closely follow Flemish market scenes, especially those by Frans Synders and his circle. However, obvious parallels in the depictions of individual details and figures with the compositions by several other anonymous Flemish artists reveal that the series should be considered within the context of the production of those Flemish painters and workshops which more or less serially repeated either entire compositions or individual details after the paintings by the well-known Flemish master painters, such as Frans Snyders, Adriaen van Utrecht, Jan Boeckhorst, and others. Thus, for example, the figure of a buyer holding a bucket with a chicken in one of the Graz paintings (inv. nr. 673) is almost identical with the one in Fruit and Vegetable Stall from the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg (inv. nr. GE 4413) which, according to N. Smolskaya, itself repeats a composition attributed to Frans Synders and Jan Boeckhorst (Christie’s London, 23. March 1973, lot 98). Similarly, the figure of a lady purchaser and that of a stall holder in the Ljubljana painting Noble Couple at the Market resemble the other two female figures in that same Hermitage painting.

In addition to the stylistic features of the Ljubljana-Graz series, the paper also deals with its meaning, especially in the context of 17^th century Flemish market scenes. It emphasizes a variety of aspects of their content, including the symbolism of individual types of fruit and fertility as well as the position of women as consumers and traders in the early modern Netherlands, with regards to the present state of research on the interpretation of 17^th century Netherlandish market scenes and their broader social-historical background as well as the perception by its Central European public. Based on the comparison with some well-known depictions of market stalls, such as Frans Snyders’s “Van Ophem” series in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, with which the ladies from Ljubljana and Graz share their appetite for a specific piece of fruit, the Ljubljana-Graz series can thus be interpreted as an allegory of abundance and fertility, while at the same time the ladies’ gesture of selecting a specific item on the fruit and vegetable stalls also defines them as the experienced consumer and thus reflects their role in the early modern mercantilist society.

Claudia-Alexandra Schwaighofer

Die Zeichnung als künstlerisches Dokument. Überlegungen zur Kennerschaft im 18. Jahrhundert

Mit Hilfe ausgewählter Quellentexte wurden in diesem Artikel die Grundzüge der Kennerschaft des 18. Jahrhunderts vermittelt. Die zentralen Fragestellungen waren die nach der Qualität eines Kunstwerks, der Zuschreibung an eine Schule oder einen konkreten Meister sowie nach Original oder Kopie – und diese Prinzipien behalten auch heute noch ihre Gültigkeit. In Kombination mit den Ausführungen zur veränderten Wertschätzung der Zeichnung wurde klar, dass der Connoisseur in der Zeichnung ein Dokument sah, das Auskünfte über den Charakter und die Beschaffenheit des künstlerischen Genies geben konnte. Allein durch das intensive in Augenschein nehmen der Zeichnung war der Kenner in der Lage, präzise Aussagen zum &OElig;uvre eines Künstlers zu treffen, ohne dass er beispielsweise auf archivalische Dokumente zur Authentifizierung eines Kunstwerks bedurfte – er war allein durch das Sehen und seine Erfahrung in der Lage, eine Zeichnung zu- oder abzuschreiben. Musste der Kenner auf das Original verzichten, so bot ihm die Reproduktionsgraphik eine entsprechende Grundlage, um sein Bildgedächtnis stetig erweitern und trainieren zu können. Durch das Zusammenwirken von drucktechnischen Innovationen und dem entsprechend hohen Anspruch derjenigen, die Reproduktionen schlichtweg als Arbeitsmaterial verwendeten, entstand das Faksimile. Dies vermochte das Original nicht zu ersetzen, bot aber durch seine größtmögliche Übereinstimmung mit ihm einen idealen Ausgangspunkt für stilistische Vergleiche.

Die Kennerschaft wurde auch mit der Etablierung der Kunstgeschichte als universitärer Disziplin im 19. Jahrhundert nicht hinfällig. Vielmehr ist sie als unerlässliche Ergänzung zur Wissenschaft zu verstehen und wird auch heute noch mit ihren grundlegenden Fragestellungen benötigt, wie es Alexander Perrig nicht präziser hätte formulieren können: »Sie hat – seit den Tagen Vasaris – die anonyme Masse des Überkommenen wieder und wieder nach Epochen, Regionen und Künstlern gesichtet und sich geschärft und verfeinert in der unentwegten Auseinandersetzung mit der je vorgefundenen Ordnung. Sie gilt weiterhin als letzte Ordnungsinstanz überhaupt, ihre Träger gelten als wissenschaftliche Autoritäten sui generis«(A. Perrig, Michelangelo Studien I, 1976, 9).

Matej Klemenčič

Some New Information about the Work of the Venetian Baroque Sculptor Jacopo Contieri (and a Note on Francesco Cabianca)

The Venetian sculptor Jacopo Contieri (born in Padua) arrived in Ljubljana in 1720 together with Francesco Robba only to return to Venice after two years, leaving the younger colleague behind. More than a decade ago, Blaž Resman established that in the 1730s Contieri might have been in Ljubljana again. As he pointed out, at the end of 1738 a certain Angela Contiera, a lapicidissa, i.e. a stone-cutter's wife, died in the city; she may well have been Jacopo’s wife. Unfortunately, further activities of Contieri in the 1740s have not been entirely clarified yet; he evidently moved to Udine, Friuli, where numerous works from this period are signed with his name (e.g. Jacobus Contierus Patavinus). However, it is necessary to see in these works an ever greater share of the sculptor's successor, Giovanni Contieri.

To understand the Friuli output of the Contieri workshop, the sculptor's sojourn in Venice in the late 1720s and early 1730s will certainly prove to be essential. For the time being, the following works by him are known from this period: the sculptural decoration of the altar of the Holy Cross in the church of San Michele in Isola, Venice (the contract is dated at the end of 1722); the two angels on the side altar in the church of San Francesco di Paola, Venice (not dated); statues on the high altar in the church of the Holy Virgin in Rijeka, Croatia, and on the high altar of the parish church in Mošćenice, Croatia (first half or mid-1720s); statues in the parish church in Casale sul Sile near Treviso; and some smaller-scale statues, such as the ones on the tabernacle of the high altar in Murlis di Zoppola (1726; originally made for San Giacomo della Giudecca, Venice). Furthermore, in the second half of the 1720s he also executed the following sculptures: the Holy Trinity, St. Francis of Assisi (both 1726) and St. Carlo Borromeo (1730) on the side altars of the parish church of the Assumption in Zero Branco and the angels on the altar of the Circumcision in the church of St. Anthony the Abbot in Rovigo (1731); from the same period probably dates the signed statue of the Virgin in the chapel of Villa Rosetta, Chierghin-Veraggio in Polesella near Rovigo. In 1729 he made two angels for the altar of the Assumption in the cathedral in Este, whereas the rest of its sculptural decoration is here attributed to Francesco Cabianca and dated between 1713 and 1716, when the altar was erected.

The choice of sculptors in Este most probably did not depend on the patrons but was left to the stone-cutters: in fact, the documented maker of the altar is Maffio Torressini, who had already collaborated with Cabianca before, namely in Kotor, Croatia, between 1704 and 1707. In connection with the works on the altar, the documents also state the name of the stone-cutter Antonio Fioretti, who later, in 1722, collaborated with Jacopo Contieri in San Michele in Isola. It is therefore possible that the clients in Este contacted Fioretti for a recommendation of a sculptor, when in 1729 they wanted to adorn the altar with two angels.

From the time when Contieri was working for Rovigo, a certain letter survives, written before May 1731, in which he is mentioned as being about to leave for the “imperial lands” to stay there for a longer spell of time, working as a sculptor. This corresponds with the above-mentioned surmise of Blaž Resman that Contieri spent some of his time in Ljubljana in the 1730s before settling down in Friuli.

Apart from the above-mentioned Angela Contieri, who died in Ljubljana towards the end of 1738, the link between the sculptor and the capital of Carniola in the mid-1730s or its second half is also represented by part of the sculptural decoration of the high altar in the chapel of Codelli Mansion near Ljubljana, which Resman convincingly attributed to Contieri and dated it to the time immediately following the construction of the chapel in 1734. Moreover, the present paper attributes three angelic statues to Contieri, namely those on St. Barbara's altar in the parish church of St. Martin in Varaždinske Toplice, Croatia. It was Francesco Robba who signed the contract for the altars of St. Catherine and St. Barbara at the end of 1727. They were both intended for Zagreb Cathedral where they were installed in the 1730s, first the one of St. Catherine and later, possibly just about the year 1738, or 1739, that of St. Barbara. Now they are both in Varaždinske Toplice, with some alterations to the original sculptural decoration (the positions of the Saints on the altars do not correspond to the original state). As a rule, earlier literature on the subject states for the angels on the top of the altars that they are not by the master—Francesco Robba—himself. Indeed, they slightly differ from other works by Robba. But, after a careful study of the angels in Varaždinske Toplice it has turned out that, in spite of the somewhat unusual handling of the hair, the two remaining angels of the originally three on the altar of St. Catherine can reliably be attributed to the master himself. The high quality of execution and the modelling of faces are typical of Robba. On the other hand, the three angels on the altar of St. Barbara are very different, but their stylistic characteristics are conspicuous enough that they can be safely attributed to Jacopo Contieri.

The three angels by Contieri in Varaždinske Toplice as part of the altar commissioned from Francesco Robba are an important clarification of the working process in the central sculptor's workshop in Ljubljana. It is likely that Robba himself invited his former collaborator to come from Venice to Ljubljana because of the increasing number of commissions. A number of other sculptors who are documented in the 1730s in Ljubljana in connection with Robba indicate that Robba's workshop became important enough by then—and not only on the local level—to offer work to those Venetian sculptors who were dissatisfied with their career on the ever more demanding sculptural market in Venice and its Terraferma.

Marco Leoni

Dal restauro della chiesa della Madonna del Rezzo di Porlezza. Nuove precisazioni sull’attività di Giulio Quaglio

I recenti lavori eseguiti nella chiesa della Madonna del Rezzo a Porlezza dimostrano come il momento del restauro possa diventare una preziosa occasione di studio grazie al confronto fra i dati materiali e le informazioni di carattere storico-archivistico che consente di precisare fasi di realizzazione e ipotesi attributive. In quest’ottica si inquadrano i dati emersi nel corso del restauro della chiesa che ha permesso di mettere in evidenza la firma di Giulio Quaglio, IULIUS QUALEUS PT MDCCXVIII, posta in uno dei pennacchi della volta e non registrata negli studi sul pittore, e alcune date incise nel cornicione (1710, 1711, 1712) riferibili alle fasi di realizzazione dell’edificio. Queste informazioni offrono una nuova datazione per la decorazione della volta, nella quale è raffigurata l’Incoronazione della Vergine, e dei pennacchi, in cui sono effigiati i Quattro Dottori della Chiesa, confermando l’attribuzione al Quaglio. Gli elementi messi in luce sembrano indicare che la costruzione dell’edificio sia arrivata all’altezza del cornicione entro il 1712 e che negli anni successivi sia stata realizzata la volta, poi decorata dal Quaglio. Si declina così una nuova sequenza per gli interventi del pittore a Porlezza, realizzati nell’arco di diversi anni e ricostruiti fino ad oggi solo per il periodo fra il 1738 ed il 1747, confermando la sua attività in territorio lariano nel 1718 e avvicinando questa decorazione ad altre sue opere: la Gloria di S. Abbondio nella parrocchiale di Mezzegra e la Gloria di S. Giuseppe nell’omonimo oratorio di Laino.

Nell’archivio parrocchiale di Porlezza non si conservano documenti contabili relativi alla chiesa precedenti al 1720 ma è possibile ricostruire l’attività del Quaglio fra il 1738 ed il 1747 grazie alle indicazioni del Libro nuovo de Conti della Fabrica della Madonna del Rezzo. Nel 1738 lavora alle tele degli altari laterali. Nel 1743 è impegnato per dipingere l’Immagine della Beata Vergine e nel 1745 per completare la decorazione dell’altare con figure di angeli disposte sui lati dell’ancona e per realizzare i due riquadri sulle pareti del presbiterio. Infine nel 1747 viene pagato per le figure fatte nelle volte delle cappelle laterali. È possibile incrociare questi dati d’archivio anche con le informazioni sugli spostamenti del pittore da Laino, parzialmente documentati nel Registro di me Giulio Quaglio o Libro di famiglia della famiglia Quaglio di Laino in cui sono indicate le spese sostenute fra il 1746 ed il 1750 per i trasporti fino ad Osteno da dove si imbarcava per Porlezza.

La sequenza degli interventi del Quaglio nella chiesa offre anche preziosi spunti per comprendere alcuni aspetti dell’attività degli artisti migranti. In primo luogo evidenzia come l’opera dei magistri nella terra natia fosse spesso articolata su un ampio arco temporale che rispondeva alla necessità di conciliare la realizzazione di queste opere con le commesse in terra straniera. Un’altra caratteristica è la concentrazione negli anni giovanili delle opere nelle terre più lontane, riconducibile all’esigenza di affrontare i cantieri più impegnativi nel pieno delle forze, a cui corrisponde invece, nell’età più matura, una sostanziale riduzione dell’area di attività concentrata nei territori limitrofi al paese d’origine.

Un ultimo aspetto è il tema del Quaglio impresario a capo di una bottega e del riconoscimento dei contributi dei figli all’interno dei singoli cantieri: è interessante notare che nel caso di Porlezza la documentazione archivistica non cita una partecipazione ai lavori da parte dei figli mentre nel cantiere della parrocchiale Dongo, completato nel 1743, è ampiamente documentata la presenza di Giovanni Maria e Raffaele Quaglio che si sarebbero occupati dell’architettura lasciando al padre la realizzazione delle figure.

Nataša Ivanović

The Painter Lovro Janša in the Grip of the Circumstances at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna at the Turn of the 18^th Century

The landscape painter Lovro Janša/Lorenz Janscha (1749–1812), born in the village of Breznica near Radovljica, Carniola, spent his entire life in Vienna, where he came as a young man and studied painting at the Akademie der bildenden Künste. He remained its member throughout and also became head of the renowned department of landscape drawing. It has not been clarified yet what was the motive for his enrolment at the academy, since the newspaper Illyrisches Blatt makes mention of Janša's skill in beekeeping as the reason for his departure for Vienna, where he followed his elder brother Anton Janša (1743–1773), who was a famous apiarist. In 1767 also a third brother, Valentin Janša (1747–1818), joined them, who likewise enrolled at the academy and later became a Korrektor in the department of history painting. The most successful of the three brothers in the field of painting (Anton, too, practiced painting in his early youth) was Lovro and he made a name for himself in the Habsburg empire with his town views of the imperial city and its surroundings and views of the areas along the Rhine.

Scholarly literature has paid but modest attention to the painter. Both in Slovene and Austrian literature shorter biographical articles about him have been written, he has been included in the studies of the role of the Vienna school of landscape painting, noted in connection with the introduction of certain art media, such as watercolour and etching, but was also monographocally presented by Franc Zupan and Elisabeth Kretschmann. The two authors partly also relied on archival sources about Janša’s role at the Vienna academy, but they did not analyse them in detail and relate them to a wider social context. The present article is based precisely on these archival documents, kept in the Universitätsarchiv der Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna, and its aim is to present the relationships between Janša and the management of the academy, which were fairly frequently rather strained. Concurrently, the organization of the academy is also presented together with Janša’s role in this institution.

Although the academy was formally free in the organization of the study programme, it was dependent on the imperial administration as regards its funding; hence the academy’s Protector was each time appointed by the state. During the time of Janša’s work at the academy, that is from his enrolment in 1766 until his death in 1812, this function was performed by three Protectors: Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz-Rietberg (1711–1874), Count Johann Philipp von Cobenzl (1741–1810) in Prince Klemens Lothar Wenzel von Metternich (1773–1859). With his special way of guidance, each of them accelerated or decelerated the decision-making, which had an effect on the organization of the academy and, consequently, on the professors and the students. Although Metternich took over the guidance of the academy early in his political career, his decisions were of major significance for Janša’s professional activity, because it was only during Metternich’s term of office that he was elected professor. Kaunitz had influence on the painter mainly in terms of his artistic formation, whereas Cobenzl held back his promotion.

The paper points out the complicated relationships between Janša, the academy’s council and the three Protectors who had the final say on Janša’s career, because it is this understanding that can help us to answer the numerous questions concerning the content and style of the painter’s oeuvre.

Andrej Smrekar

An Overlooked Painting by Ivan Grohar

A so far unregistered altar painting, The Death of St. Ursula, by Ivan Grohar (1867–1911) has been discovered recently in the parish church of St. James in Ljubljana. Stylistically it fits into the sequence of Grohar's early church commissions between the Sacred Heart of Jesus, commissioned by the bishop of Ljubljana Anton Bonaventura Jeglič and exhibited in September 1900, and its replica, delivered at the end of 1901. Grohar’s receipt confirming reception of 400 crowns for two St. Ursula paintings has been known before. However, it was understood as payment for a smaller painting of St. Ursula on the table of St. Anne's altar in the same church and a model panel of the same subject that appears in the Grohar catalogue in 1927 as property of Dr. Gregorij Pečjak and in France Stelè's monograph on Grohar of 1960. The panel is now at St. Anne pilgrimage church in Tunjice.

Of the three paintings, which represent the Death of St. Ursula, the panel painting is the model for the large altarpiece, while the canvas on the table is a detail of the central segment of the angel, St. Ursula and her assistant. The smaller two paintings are signed, the large one is not. The Confraternity of St. Ursula for a Happy Death, which had existed already in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, was revived at St. James church by the bishop Anton Jeglič on October 30, 1899. The receipt is dated February 25, 1901, and June 30 is dated the Episcopal agreement to reproduce the image in the membership card with printed rules of the confraternity. However, reproduced is the Pečjak panel, not the altar painting.

Grohar was probably requested to model his painting on the old confraternity painting by Valentin Metzinger executed in 1749 for the confraternity’s altar in the Ursuline church of the Holy Trinity in Ljubljana. The religious confraternities were dissolved by the imperial decree of 1783. Their revival was possible only after 1848. The St. James parish holds two confraternity books. The first one predates the reestablishment of the confraternity at St. James's, when it was led by the Capuchins in Celje. Its status is still insufficiently explained. Since the confraternity at the Ursuline church was not revived, the Episcopal foundation of the new confraternity placed its seat “at the altar of St. Ursula in the St. James church”. Repetition of the old model signified continuity which must have been the intention of the patron.

Grohar derived the painting from his Sacred Heart of Jesus project for which we know that he had used models from his neighbourhood. He translated the heavenly apparition of the mortally wounded saint supported by two angels in Metzinger’s Baroque composition into a realistic narrative. The two women have just disembarked at the pier in Cologne—the bow of the boat can be seen in the foreground; Ursula, wearing the royal ermine, has been hit by an arrow, her friend has caught her in her arms and an angel assists her. The model's limitations did not allow him to expand on the composition. The smaller painting on the altar table is most successful in terms of quality. It exhibits confident brushwork in thinned paint, harmonized palette, effectively integrated into a graceful image of the dying heroine. This painting was obviously meant for the permanent display, while the large one was inserted into the niche only occasionally, since St. Ursula lodged with St. Anne.

The receipt should be understood as the payment for the two altar paintings. The panel was useless after the commission was executed and may have been presented to the chaplain Pečjak as an expression of gratitude. All the church commissions were managed, or at least supervised, by the Society for Christian Art, whose member Grohar was at least after his successful presentation of two paintings for the pilgrimage church at Brezje. The Death of St. Ursula altarpiece is the only commission we do not find in the almanac of the Society and this is a clear indication that the confraternity itself commissioned Grohar as the member of St. James parish and famous artist of the paintings for Brezje. The painting does not substantially affect our understanding of Grohar as a religious painter but it does suggest that its commission was untypical. Without any direct evidence about the commission we shall not be able to explain why the painting disappeared from sight.

Beti Žerovc

Girls at First Communion, Roza Klein and Naked Women in the Painting of Matej Sternen

The paper presents three different issues related to the painter Matej Sternen (1870–1949), which are focused upon obtaining a deeper and more far-reaching insight into a certain stylistic phase of the painter than could be obtained through the usual study of his chronologically lined up output.

The first part deals with the iconographical motif of girls receiving their First Communion, which seems to have greatly interested the painter in his early period, since it is clear that he painted several variants. Systematized and investigated are the painter's known executions of the motif, whether in drawing or in print medium, or, respectively, the mentions of such works by Sternen in various sources. The research result is satisfactory on the one hand and on the other it is not. Confirmed was the presumed interest of the painter in this motif, and several realizations have been found, among which two variants of the motif differ one from the other completely. But regretfully, no bigger and more ambitions canvases are among the discovered works. With the help of the known material we can merely imagine that the paintings were executed in realistic style, possibly not in the best way, so that they contained similar awkward solutions as can be traced in Sternen's comparable known works of this period. Sternen's genre painting is further integrated within the wider context of similar production of his Carniolan predecessors and contemporaries (Jožef Petkovšek, Anton Ažbe, Ferdo Vesel, Ivan Grohar, Rihard Jakopič, Matija Jama).

The second part investigates Sternen's partner Roza Klein as the principal character in his works of the 1903–07 period. It is not merely interesting to know who is depicted in some of the painter’s capital pieces (Portrait of Roza Klein, Počivajoča/Woman Resting, Rdeči parazol/The Red Parasol, Mrak/Twilight, etc.), but such a thorough study clarifies his poorly presented oeuvre and joins the images, which otherwise hover isolated, into a more concrete whole. Unexpectedly, the study of Roza Klein as the painter's model finally developed into a significant help to a more reliable chronology of Sternen's works and better understanding of the artist's painting mode and development. The depictions of Sternen's partner, first his girlfriend and later his wife, render possible to follow well the painter's stylistic evolution, in which the painting Twilight, for example, is one of his most experimental and artistically charged pictures. A special aspect to be clearly emphasized in this issue is that works, such as the Twilight, were not mere studies for Sternen's private use, waiting for decades to leave his studio for the first time, but they were considered by himself as his essential production already at the time of their origin. This can be concluded without hesitation from the fact that Sternen regularly exhibited this kind of his production, without regard to negative criticism, and stated the highest prices for such works.

The third part attempts to examine the frequently uttered statement that Sternen could not exhibit his famous nudes in the conservative and puritanical Ljubljana, or that he could only show them at home or, covered with a cloth, in a separate room of the Jakopič Pavilion, accessible only to the select. So it deals with the question when and whether at all, and in what context, the painter exhibited this kind of his production in Ljubljana.

The task proved to be fairly easy in the case of exhibiting: a systematic overview of the exhibition catalogues of the Jakopič Pavilion between the years 1912–16, when Sternen was presumably intensely producing his ambitiously painted nudes, has shown that he did exhibit them, even several at a time. The famed Corset, for example, was exhibited in 1914 at the Christmas exhibition, while at the 12^th Art Exhibition in mid-1916 the painter even showed exclusively nudes, i.e. a group of four large-scale female ones: The Magdalene, A Mask (Krinka), Nude (Akt) and After the Bath (Po kopeli).

The tolerance for and the level of susceptibility to painted nudes were by no means as low in Ljubljana in the early 20^th century as we are inclined to believe. As regards this issue, Carniolan morals were in general more lax as it seems; art nude and its exhibiting were acceptable, because this was grounded, firstly, in the nude having several centuries of tradition and, secondly, in the very training process, which made the drawing and painting of human body the key task of study. Good command of study nude was an important, actually the most important, step towards a successful rendering of a multi-figural composition, which was at least throughout the 19^th century still generally considered a sort of professional climax in the art of painting. For this reason study nude of good quality was highly valued, and it was not painted only by students but also by established painters throughout their career, whether as exercise or preliminary work for various scenes. These sorts of nudes were regularly exhibited, without particular difficulties also in Ljubljana. For example, at the First and the Second Slovenian Art Exhibitions a considerable number of different nudes (Sternen’s too!) were shown, which led to no major trouble. Slovene art critics and reporters were by far more disturbed by the modernity and particularly by the “non finito”. Both study and autonomous nudes were not expected to embarrass the middle-class audience also because of the fact that these spectators were acquainted with the depictions of nudes by various Salon painters, who were even rewarded at the most outstanding Salon exhibitions and applauded all over Europe. Their nudes were regularly reproduced in different papers and illustrated magazines. Summa summarum, the basic question in the reception of nudes in early-20^th-century Ljubljana, like elsewhere, was not whether the nude yes or the nude no, but where the slippery limit was that denoted which and what kind of nude was no longer acceptable.

Marjeta Ciglenečki

Vera Blumenau Simonič in the School of Anton Ažbe

There are many overlooked personalities in Slovenian art history. The reasons of such a situation are various. Some of them can be traced in the life story of the painter Vera Blumenau Simonič (1881–1973); it is a story of a talented girl, to whom good education was provided and a promising art career opened. However, marriage, care of the family, thirteen years of life in Russia, the Great War, the revolution in Russia, risky return to Slovenia and difficult circumstances in the modified social situation changed her life totally. She had a lot of creative energy, so she never stopped painting. But she exhibited rarely, art criticism overlooked her work and her creativeness gradually weakened. Her paintings are divided between Slovenia, Serbia, Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Bohemia, the United States of America and perhaps even Teheran. Her legacy is small in quantity and not balanced in quality. The research into Vera Blumenau Simonič’s oeuvre is only possible with the help of the heirs. In the legacy a number of letters are preserved which the painter wrote to her parents and to her sister Olga. There is also her biography and a list of her paintings together with their presumed whereabouts; in her old age, the painter dictated from memory all these data to her daughter Nada.

Vera Simonič was born on June 20, 1881, in Vienna into an intellectual family. Her father, Franc Simonič (1847–1919), was a well-known bibliographer and the head of the Universitätsbibliothek. After the father retired in 1907, the family moved to Radgona (Radkersburg, today Gornja Radgona in Slovenia). There were three daughters in the family; Vera was the second one. She studied painting in Adolf Kaufmann’s private painting school, but to her disadvantage she could not practice drawing nudes from life, because it was forbidden for girls at that time. Together with two school-fellows she joined some graduates from the academy who organised a private course in drawing nudes. Two of her drawings are preserved from that time which show the weaknesses of a beginner. In 1900 the Kaufmann school failed. Vera Simonič and two of her school-fellows hired their own studio in Reisnerstrasse and payed for a model, but did not have enough money to afford a corrector. It was Ivan Prijatelj (1875–1937), a Slovenian literary historian, who advised Vera to enrol in Anton Ažbe’s painting school in Munich.

Vera arrived in Munich in the autumn of 1901. The letters to her parents and sister Olga are pervaded by homesickness. Munich enraptured her with its galleries and museums, theatres and the library, she was attracted by the political tumult, but she was reserved towards the school of Anton Ažbe. In general, Vera’s letters from Munich are a precious testimony, interesting from different points of view. The reader is impressed by her fluent, narration, written in Slovenian language and in some passages even literarily inspired; it can be ranked somewhere between literary language and the dialect of Prlekija, a vineyard region, where Vera’s father was born. Some Germanisms and German words are to be found in her texts, too. Vera was educated in German language, but at home the members of the family spoke Slovenian, which was certaily coloured by the dialect. In the letters she reported regularly on her everyday life. As concerns Anton Ažbe, Vera’s letters present his school through the eyes of a slightly disappointed girl. Some passages in the letters are interesting exactly because of her viewpoint, which differs from the prevailing praise of Ažbe’s teaching success.

Vera's first close meeting with Ažbe was pleasant. Ažbe gave her a Legitimatio, which enabled her to visit exhibitions free of charge; she also respected his correctura in the studio. But at the same time a reservation towards Ažbe is to be noticed as well as a trace of dissatisfaction concerning the work at school. She described his and the behaviour of his close friends as Junggesellenmanieren; for this reason she began to avoid their company. But her main disappointment concerned her wish to advance from the studio in Amalienstrasse to the one in Georgenstrasse.It is known that Ažbe divided his students at first to the male- and the female department, later to the department for the beginners and to the other one for the older and better students. In February 1902 she realized that she would not ascend to the higher class, so she began to organize training on her own. She spent fewer hours working in the studio in Amaliengasse, but she began to visit libraries and galleries more often.

There is not much information about her school-fellows in Vera’s letters, but they offer evidence that Ažbe’s school was a real “Babylon of nations and languages”, as was described by Nadežda Petrović, a Serbian modernist painter and one of the most distinguished students of Ažbe’s. Vera kept company only with Roza Klein (1867–1956), who later married the impressionist painter Matej Sternen; otherwise it seems she lived more or less in solitude. She even established no contacts with Slovenian impressionists, but she was informed that at the beginning of 1902 Matija Jama and Matej Sternen came to Munich. Instead of joining noisy parties at Ažbe’s school she preferred visiting theatres, various lectures, state library and political gatherings. She regularly visited galleries, most frequently the Alte Pinakothekand the Secession; she was deeply impressed by Max Klinger’s statue of Beethoven, which she saw before it was transferred to Vienna. Not many details about the artists she was interested in can be found in her letters. She only mentions the architect Theodor Fischer (1862–1938) and the painter Karl Langhammer (1868– ?).

Vera Simonič obviously wanted to experience Munich as widely as possible. New political movements and researches in the field of psychology exerted influence on art and literature in Munich; Ibsen was highly popular, and so was Munch. Vera was very much attracted by the lectures of Theodor Lipps (1851–1914), a psychologist, who became well-known thanks to his theories of aesthetics, especially his concept of the so-called Einfühlung,empathy, which he explained as a possibility of an individual to make a projection of himself into the object of perception. Lipps was professor at the Munich university between 1894 and 1914, famous as a charismatic lecturer. It is to be mentioned that Anton Ažbe was, as experts have ascertained, close to the aesthetics of Konrad Fiedler (1841–1895), which was based on the principles of “pure visualization”.

In the bequest of Blumenau Simonič, kept by her heirs in Ptuj, a map of drawings made in the school of Ažbe is preserved. In a certain way, the drawings present Ažbe’s methods of teaching. With sufficient criticism we have to admit that the drawings do not meet the standards which Ažbe required from his students. Vera’s line is shy and thin and the drawings cannot hide anatomical deficiencies. Such errors can be traced in Vera’s work also in the following years, when she was bold enough to express herself in strong and contrasting colours. The drawings are not balanced in quality; among the better ones there is a female nude, shown from the back, in which the typical Ažbe Kugelprinzip can be traced. Obviously a corrector intervened into the nude. From Vera’s Munich time only her drawings are preserved; there is no evidence of how she handled colours which later became the best component of her painting.

In November 1901 Simonič made acquaintance with her future husband, Maxim Blumenau (1873–1932), a linguist by profession, who was born in the vicinity of Riga. Vera and Maxim married in 1905 in Vienna and immediately moved to Russia. First they lived in Ekaterinoslav, then in Herson by the Dnjeper, where two children were born to them. In 1913 the family moved to Moscow, where Vera enrolled in Il’ya Ivanovich Mashkow’s private school. She was visiting his studio almost continuously till her departure from Russia in 1918. From Vera’s Moscow period only three paintings survive in Slovenia. The influence of her new teacher is obvious. She was very bold in using colours, on the other hand Anton Ažbe’s Kugelprinzip can still be traced and she did not suceed in conquering difficulties of human anatomy.

With the help of Franc Simonič and the International Red Cross the family Blumenau managed to leave Russia at the end of 1918. In the autumn of 1919, the family settled in Ptuj. After the death of her father in 1919, Vera inherited a small estate in Brebrovnik near Ljutomer (Eastern Slovenia). Since this property was the only chance for the survival of the family, she undertook viniculture and cellarman’s trade with all her energy. Maxim Blumenau died in 1932 in sad circumstances in a lunatic asylum in Zagreb. In 1954 the authorities nationalised the estate in Brebrovnik and Vera left Slovenia in disappointment. She spent the years 1956 and 1957 in Serbia and Turkey, where she followed her son, an engineer, who repurchased the property in Brebrovnik. So she returned to Slovenia and lived partly in Brebrovnik and partly in Ptuj where she died on June 17^th, 1973. She is buried in the family sepulchre in Gornja Radgona.

In the bequest of the painter there are some paintings from the 1920s and 1930s. All of them are portraits which can be described as expressionistic. She executed them with wide and impasto strokes and contrasting colours. Later on the quality of her paintings distinctly declined. In 1920 Simonič Blumenau took part at the First Art Exhibition in Maribor; in 1923 she sent three portraits to the Jakopič pavilion in Ljubljana, but only one was selected for the exhibition. In 1958 she prepared her own exhibition in the museum in Ptuj. Her last exhibition was in 1961 in the museum in Murska Sobota. It would be right to make a study of the painter’s legacy, preserved in Slovenia, as a whole and to try to find more information about her paintings in Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere. Vera Blumenau Simonič was a brave woman, who painted almost until the end of her life and in her late days she even made sculptures. Her destiny was typical of a woman who was faced with numerous obstacles on her path. She gave priority to the fight for survival of the family and that is why she had to neglect her artistic talent. But there is evidence which proves that she was a cosmopolitan and was familiar with the main European artistic streams. Nevertheless, her Russian experience is unique in Slovenian painting and would deserve more attention in the future. If her one-year stay in Anton Ažbe’s school did not fulfil her expectations, she was much more successful in looking for a kind of Russian colouring.

Andrej SMREKAR

Two Perelle Prints in the National Gallery of Slovenia

The Collection of Works on paper in the National Gallery of Slovenia holds two etchings by Perelle (NG G 3362 and NG G 3363), printed by Remondini. The provenance of one of them can be traced no further back than 1948 when France Stele documented it in Federal Concentration Centre (FZC – the temporary institution that collected works of art from the estates confiscated by the state from the “class enemy” between 1945−1951, established on various locations in Yugoslavia) in Ljubljana. Although both prints were made from strongly worn out plates, they contain a peculiar inscription that enables us to hypothetize an approximate date of printing and its rather irregular circumstance. Contrary to more frequent practices, Remondini had the etcher's signature Perelle fecit extended by in Bassano per il Remondini. The rest of the plate seems untouched.

Both prints can be compared to the impressions from the earlier state of the plates in the series of six prints depicting ruins of the key Roman monuments between Palatine, Esquiline, and Coelius. The etchings are by Gabriel Perelle (1604−1977) after the drawings by Jan Asselyn (ca 1610−1652), while the printing privilege was held by the mysterious publisher Daman. Contrary to the usual indications that Daman was an Italian publisher, Peter Führing rightly claims that at least an (early) part of his career was spent in Paris since he held the Privilège du Roy on several prints. It is worth noting that the prints carry Italian titles from the start.

We can track Daman's activity in Paris back to 1645, the date inscribed on a Cochin print in Remondini Museum in Bassano. Noëlle Avel dates the Parisian series between 1650 and 1655. Gabriel Perelle, himself a printer and a publisher, has produced numerous prints after Asselyn. Both artists travelled to Italy. Perelle returned in 1642, Asselyn in 1648. Since Perelle is the one who worked from Asselyn drawings for various publishers, he is the most likely link to Asselyn and not Daman. Daman then probably took his plates to Italy where they were purchased by Remondini, who amassed a stupendous collection of old plates and re-runs were produced through at least a century and a half. One of his ways to success was through cutting cost by elimination of the inventor, hiring cheaper labour and printing re-runs even at the price of illegal practices. He took advantage of (Royal) privilege regulation limited to the national territories in his international and even intercontinental trade.

Daman is believed to have died late in the 17^th century. His early contact with Remondini is documented in the re-publication of Domenico Borboni's book Architecture Dominici Borbonii Celeberrimi Architecti et Pictoris Bononiensis ex Typografio Remondiniano Veneto believed to have been produced first with Daman's title in Paris around 1646 (a sample in Lyon and probably in the Metropolitan Library of Zagreb as well), while Remondini's edition appeared probably around 1670. In Remondini's edition the title was translated from Italian to Latin and the frontispiece identified the place as ex typografio Remondiniano Veneto instead A Paris as the Lyon sample is marked. The extension of the signature in the National Gallery prints is a measure analogous to Borboni's book, declaring in fact Remondini Daman's printer while Gabriel Perelle was still alive. It is possible then that Daman's privilege expired in Paris, so he took his business to Italy where most of his prints, titled in Italian, were destined anyway. (Whether such a decision could be the consequence of general revocation of Privilèges Spéciaux, or Privilèges Généraux, in 1674, is a question for legal historians.) He found a congenial business partner in Remondini, who had moved his fabrics and metal tools trade from Padua to Bassano del Grappa around the mid-17^th century. There he extended it in printing and publishing industry so zealously that he presented a serious competition to the Sadelers in Venice already during the 1660s.

Remondini's forcing of plates is documented somewhat later, when he hired Pietro Menarola (1665−1700) and sister Isabella Piccini (1644−c.1734) to engrave images of saints and force old plates. The company was put on trial in Augsburg in the 18^th century because of duplication of plates of perspective views without any mark of the actual production. It resulted in confiscation of the entire Remondini's stock of perspective views in Augsburg. The inscription on the prints in the National Gallery indicates a different and perhaps less arduous strategy than later fraudulent excesses in avoiding legal limitations that suggests a Daman/Remondini joint venture. It is precisely one of the kind of the abuses that provoked a prohibition of re-importation of prints with the French privilege back to France in 1716.

The views of the Roman monuments by Asselyn, produced as a record of the Italian tour at his time still reserved for the artists and the cognoscienti that appear in the images, were printed for mass consumption of the hereditary and financial elites of the Grand Tour identified as a social phenomenon at precisely the same moment by Richard Lassel. A low quality print from a run down plate became an easily available pop version of the early impression valued by the connoisseur and the scholar.

This article is based on Peter Führing's writings. I wish to extend my gratitude to my colleague in the National Gallery of Slovenia Tina Buh, to the volunteer and penetrating reader Blaž Resman and the editor Alenka Klemenc, both of them of the France Stele Institute of Art History at the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, to Federica Milozzi in Bassano del Grappa, Ed Deegan of the Fisher Fine Arts Library, Penn University, and Mirna Abaffy of the Biblioteka Metropolitana in Zagreb for information and consultation, as well as to Prof. Dr. Jure Mikuž of the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis, Dr. Jedert Vodopivec, head of the Conservation dept., Archives of the Republic of Slovenia, and artist Bojan Kovačič for the invaluable consultations. They all make it a collective effort.

Ana LAVRIČ

Portrait of Prince-Bishop Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim in the Franciscan Monastery of Novo mesto

The Franciscan monastery in Novo mesto holds a portrait of a hitherto anonymous prince-bishop who is identified in the present paper. A personage is under question who could not be looked for among the native church dignitaries; considering the painting’s provenance, it was pointed out several years ago that the sitter was to be searched for among the German prince-bishops. The fact is that the canvas originates from Hmeljnik (Hopfenbach) Castle, which was owned between 1876 and 1945 by the German family of Wamboldt von Umstadt. The family came to the Slovenian land from Hessen, bringing with them also their works of art. During the Second World War, in 1942, the castle was burnt down by the fighters of the National Liberation War, but prior to this the works of art had been taken away and dispersed by the locals, while after the war a greater number of paintings were collected in the Federal Concentration Centre and subsequently assigned to the National Museum of Slovenia (for several years they were on loan in the regional museum Dolenjski muzej in Novo mesto). In what way eight paintings from Hmeljnik ended in the Novo mesto Franciscan monastery, has not yet been clarified, but it is explicable through the connections between the owners of the castle and the monastery. The Franciscan fathers would go to celebrate the holy mass in their castle chapel and were also otherwise regular guests at the castle. They might have received the paintings as a gift before the Second World War, although it seems more likely that the canvases found a safe place in the monastery immediately before the arson of the castle in 1942.

A survey of comparative European materials shows that the portrait shows Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim (1708–1779), prince-bishop of Würzburg (1755–1779) and Bamberg (1757–1779). Comparisons with numerous Seinsheim’s portraits, which are presented in the study by Burkard Roda (Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim Auftraggeber zwischen Rokoko und Klassizismus […], 1980), render possible the dating of the painting in 1755 or 1756, because it demonstrates the features of the bishop’s early period: relatively youthful appearance, the wig matching the fashion of that time, characteristic pectoral (but already hanging on a black and not golden ribbon as shown in the first grand-manner portrait of 1755/56), and only one mitre, i.e. the Würzburg one (from 1757 onwards he was presented with two mitres). The portrait is painted with great skill (however, with minor deficiencies in the proportions) and shows the sitter in his ecclesiastical and statesman’s decorum and with all pertaining insignia. With some reservations because of the relatively monochrome colours and linearity, he could tentatively be attributed to the painter Franz Lippold of Frankfurt, who made a whole series of portraits of Seinsheim. The closest to the Hmeljnik picture are the full-length portrait in the “White Hall” at Würzburg residence—which is, however, richer in its arrangement, more vivid in its colouring and conveying stronger dynamism, but equal in its facial type and posture—and the portrait in the billiards room at Veitshöchheim, which is close to it also in the selected segment. Thus, the painting in Slovenia appears to be only a modest complement to the great number of known and preserved bishop’s portraits; but interesting is its fate which brought it to these places, where it remains without a proper context and where the name of the self-confident sitter sank into oblivion.

However, there is a small detail in his life that connects Seinsheim to Dolenjska (Lowland Slovenia, with its principal city of Novo mesto), that is his collaboration with the famous engraver of seals, coins and medals, Franc Andrej Šega/Schega (1711–1787). The latter left his native Novo mesto (Rudolfswert) in his youth and came to Munich, where he became court medalist, and Seinsheim invited him to Würzburg in 1755 to make a medal for him with his portrait in profile (in three variants) on the occasion of his accession to the bishopric office.

Alenka Vodnik

France Stelè's Fieldwork Notes and Their (In)Significance in the Study of Slovenian Medieval Wall Paintings

France Stelè (1886–1972), one of the founders of the discipline of art history in Slovenia, dedicated his research work in the first place to medieval wall paintings in the Slovenian lands, which he presented in numerous papers and contributed to the knowledge about them with his pioneering works Srednjeveško stensko slikarstvo (Medieval Wall Paintings; 1935) and Cerkveno slikarstvo med Slovenci (Religious Painting with the Slovenes;1937).

Already when in 1910 he had to choose the theme for his doctoral thesis and decided on medieval wall paintings in Carniola, he started to write in his notebooks his observations about individual monuments while he was on his study fieldwork visits. He carried on this practice as official duty also after the year 1913 when he became provincial conservator for Carniola. Although in 1937 he was appointed associate professor and in 1952 full professor at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, he continued to collaborate with the monument protection office, particularly after the Second World War, in uncovering medieval frescoes of which he made notes until 1970.

In 1940, when he became full member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, he transferred his fieldwork notes to its section of art history, the present-day France Stelè Institute of Art History at the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, where they continue to be kept. From 2006 onwards they are also available to a widest public as typed copies on web page http://gis.zrc-sazu.si/zrcgis/ewmap.asp?catprj=zrcgis.stele.

Among his innumerable notes, Stelè also wrote down his observations on a considerable number of monuments with medieval wall paintings from abroad, whether for study purposes of comparison, e.g. Italian (mainly Friulian) and Austrian monuments (Carinthian and Styrian in the first place) or for the purpose of his office as a conservator, e.g. Croatian monuments, or Istrian respectively.

Naturally, the greatest majority of his fieldwork notes describes Slovenian medieval wall paintings which he re-visited for a number of times, in shorter or longer intervals. His inventories and detailed descriptions were beyound doubt the basis for his early works, such as the above-mentioned Srednjeveško stensko slikarstvo and Cerkveno slikarstvo med Slovenci; but the question is how much, or whether at all, he relied on them in his later writings, and also to what extent his assessments of individual monuments of Slovenian medieval wall paintings jotted down at fieldwork were used by his fellow art historians. With regard to relatively few citations of his fieldwork notes in Slovenian scholarly publications, and if the notes are compared to the present state of research, it can be established that Stelè's fieldwork notes have not been paid due attention and that particularly in the case of wall paintings which do not survive they are an invaluable art historical source.

Maja Lozar Štamcar

The Slovenian Society of Designers – Its First Decade (1951-1961)

Up until the second world war a wide array of Slovenian artists were gradually evolving into professional designers. At Ljubljana School of Architecture in the twenties and thirties, under the supervision of Profs. Plečnik and Vurnik, dozens of young people were trained, many of them eagerly embarking on designing furniture, lighting, ceramics and textiles. They were joined by their peers who had studied elsewhere in Europe. Among them were two dedicated modernists, Jože Mesar and Ivo Spinčič, who in 1931 published the statement book A Residence and launched the journal Architecture. Already there were talented art photographers, with a history of exhibitions, and graphic designers, catering posters, packaging and other material to the quickly growing business of advertising. Several scenographers and costumographers were active in Slovenian theatres and in film-making. In the thirties, the plurality of artistic styles and of price-ranges provided work and good pay to manufacturers as well as designars, despite the increasingly felt economic crisis. Slovenian applied arts and industrial design had attained an enviable quality, when the tragic forties came; in the first half the world war, in the latter the neckbreaking revolution towards a one-party Soviet-type political, economic and cultural system. Design, present in society on every level, even though not recognized as such, from political propaganda to the world of culture to the various facets of economy, industrial, commercial and advertising, experienced the same tectonic changes. A handful of senior and especially quite a few junior designers wanted to use these ideologically controlled circumstances to establish the global up-to-date design in Slovenia and the fifties are marked by just these optimistic and creative people. Their enthusiasm reached its peak by the late fifties, when after a series of increasingly better home exhibitions and effective presentations abroad they succeeded to reform the secondary School of Design and initiate a design department at the School of Architecture of the Ljubljana University. The crucial agent in the advancement of Slovenian postwar design became the Society of designers. This is the first study of the society's creation and activities at home and abroad. It has been written on the basis of the rendomly surviving bits of its archive, recently accessioned by the National Museum of Slovenia. The study is illustrated by a selection of official photos showing installations of all four collective exhibitions held between 1953 and 1961. A list of close to two hundred society's members has also been compiled. This fundamental research deliberately does not involve any individual members' activities. In 1951 two main Slovenian art societies were founded, of architects and of fine artists. The latter included a section of designers, who in June of that year formed an independent Slovenian Society of Decorative Arts. Three years later, when this Society joined the Yugoslav Association of the Societies of Applied Artists, its name was changed into the Society of Applied Artists of Slovenia, to be renamed again in 1967 as The Slovenian Society of Designers. The leading members of the Society immediately started to organize all sorts of events, discussions, lectures, and exhibitions. This steady appearance in public gradually resulted in a markedly increased sensitivity for quality design. Nearly all founding members had higher education and had already been renowned artists before the second world war. The great majority were architects by profession, the most active among them Ivo Spinčič. Prof. Jože Plečnik was the Society's first honorary member and Honorary President, while its first operative President was Vinko Glanz. In 1954 he was replaced by the agile Spinčič, and he in turn in 1960 and 1961 by Niko Kralj. Besides architects, the second largest group of members (in this first decade it amounted to around twenty) graduated in the postwar period at the secondary (five- and later four-year) Ljubljana School of Applied Arts (Design). The Society had several sections, of architects, graphic designers, photographers, scenographers, costumographers, fashion, textile, ceramics and glass designers.

The fifties were punctuated by four collective exhibitions, all in Ljubljana. The first took place in 1953 in the Modern Gallery. Its main characteristic was heterogeneity, with a wide variety of artefacts ranging from baskets to garden sculpture, which in this first comprehensive show could not possiblly be avoided, bearing in mind the manadatory attendance of the membership. The second Society's collective exhibition was organized in 1955 in the Jakopič' Pavilion. Like the first one, it reflected the extraordinary variety of creators and their artefacts. As an intermezzo in 1956 came a radically different concept of the federal exhibition Residential living fit for our environment, which was put up by the Standing Conference of Yugoslav Sities, focusing primarily on architectural and industrial design issues. Prominent Society's members made a major contribution, especially in the furniture segment. The third Society's major exhibition was on view from late 1958 to early 1959 again in the Modern Gallery, this time not in the large groundfloor, but in the more intimate cellar exhibition rooms. It was praised by experts as a serious attempt to bring together designers and industrial producers as well as familiarizing the general public as potential buyers with quality design goods. The last, fourth collective Society's exhibition in 1961, accompanied by a carefully designed brochure, was also hosted by the Modern Gallery, and later traveled also to Maribor and Slovenj Gradec. Judging by the response of the public and experts alike it came to be the most successful of all. The choise of members' works was the strictest and it evidently represented another long step from a unique, on-off to mass production. Several prototypes were bought off by factories. While in the previous three exhibitions sculptural artefacts were decidedly in the forefront, namely plastic design in clay, stone, wood, felt etc., this last one was given its leading tone by textiles in dialogue with furniture. Apart from such group events, the more entrepreneurial members went on to prepare more and more individual exhibitions, for instance of photography.

Besides exhibitions, there were all sorts of other activities. Members wrote articles to various periodicals and from 1959 the Society ran its own newletter Informator. Several designers were involved in commercial fairs, especially the Wood and Fashion Fairs, regularly taking place since the mid-fifties at the Trade Fair Grounds in Bežigrad in Ljubljana. When the editor of the journal Architect France Ivanšek, together with Prof. Ravnikar and a group of Swedish experts, organized a series of courses in the early sixties called Colour and Shape (the first was for architects and members of the Society), the direct influence of Scandinavian design, already strongly felt, became even more evident. The Society of Applied Artists of Slovenia also regularly participated in federal design events. For instance, in 1956 and 1961 in Belgrade at the all-Yugoslav exhibitions entitled Art and Industry, or, in the late fifties, it was mainly textile designers who took part at the yearly exhibition Family and Household at the Zagreb Trade Fair. Several interesting touring design exhibitions, both from the West and the East, came in that period to Yugoslavia, stopping in Ljubljana and sometimes also in Maribor. Our public first came in touch with contemporary foreign design through posters, in 1952 at an exhibition of Swiss posters, later the British and again Swiss and in 1959 contemporary Polish posters. In that and the two following years Ljubljana hosted no less than three American exhibitions on design, works by design students in the USA, advertising, and contemporary American applied arts. Conversely, more and more members were sending their works to exhibitions and competitions across the world. Already in 1955 several participated at the Ceramics exhibition in Cannes. The most outstanding among the early postwar international appearances was at the Eleventh Milan Triennale with Ivo Spinčič as the organizer of the Yugoslav presentation. Abroad, mostly in the Socialist Eastern block, several exhibitions of contemporary Yugoslav applied arts were touring, introduced in 1958 with the third collective Slovenian design exhibition which was shown in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the East. There were some lectures in Ljubljana given by eminent foreign theoreticians and designers, for example in 1961 by the Japanese Professor Hojke. In 1961 the Yugoslav Association and with it the Slovenian Society of Applied Artists entered the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) in Venice, where Slovenian authors were represented with eleven works out of fifteen, shown on photos, and in person by Ivo Spinčič and Niko Kralj. The Society was intrinsically linked to the secondary-level School of Applied Arts in Ljubljana, newly established in 1946. The school was naturally very important as it was the only one educating designers in the first postwar years in Slovenia. Since any attempt to establish a higher-education design programme failed, it continued to be the only one for several subsequent decades. Members of the Society were on the school board and worked on the school curriculum. In the first fifteen years at least twenty Society's members served, in varying periods, as teachers there. After a number of senior professors had retired, the school was renamed in 1960 School of Design and its curriculum was modified. New teachers, mostly architects of Prof. Ravnikar's school, intended primarily to train design technicians who would be able to make models to architects' ideas and help with negotiating them for mass production in factories. Unfortunately, this sharp turn towards industrial design left behind and almost entirely dispensed with the traditional craftsmanship and applied arts. The other Prof. Ravnikar's goal was to also modernize his own domain, namely the Ljubljana School of Architecture. For years he endeavoured to introduce modern methods of teaching such as were being practised in the most eminent European architecture and design schools. He also managed to start a new department for design, which, however, was eliminated after only two years.

The Slovenian Society of Applied Artists already started off successfully, by bringing together most of the design potential in Slovenia. Not surprisingly, since it was launched by a handful of competent people, Ivo Spinčič and Dana Pajnič, Niko Kralj and Gregor Košak, to name just a couple of seniors and juniors, respectively. They had remarkable organizing skills, high artistic potentials, delighted in experimenting, and above all had a sound education and training. In the face of a late start, nearly a decade after the rapidly advancing nations who in 1945 had been economically and morally much more down and out than the Slovenians, these designers tried hard for both their own and common good to keep up. Yet this huge artistic potential largely went disused. After the quenching of private enterpreneurship any larger production of goods was taken over by overlarge state-owned factories. These were under strict control of the authorities with an agenda which certainly did not include a vibrant home market with as many varied goods as possible. It became sufficient that leading people and manual workers were able to produce the essentials; that these cheap goods were distributed to undemanding and traditional crowds in shops which had therefore no need to worry about competition. It is therefore understandable that members of the Society had limited success with their persistant arguing that factory managers should include designers more into the production process, not to mention non-existant art directors. Quickly, there was another key factor: out-of-date, mostly prewar machines and expensive, therefore unattainable modern materials made it outright impossible to carry out any really demanding designs proposed by the home designers. And lastly, apart from scant cultivated individuals who treasured quality design if they could find it anywhere, the majority buyers' taste could not be improved overnight. Carefully prepared good quality design shows attracted few visitors. With society as a whole being fairly uninterested, most of the striving to lift design more into public consciousness hardly left the inner circle of professional designers around the journal Architect who spent a lot of time convincing the already convinced. The state's financial support was enough for minor exhibitions, lectures, meetings and some travelling grants; but for far-reaching projects, international exhibitions, an industrial design centre, and above all an appropriate higher level of education with a School of Design complete with equipped workshops and dinamic teachers, there was never enough money. Although far from the democratic modernist maxim – art for all and everyone – the excellence of Slovenian design survived and evolved. Slowly the authorities and the intert public realized that design was indeed useful, if only for the public image of state institutions and firms. In the late fifties the majority of practising designers were still trained architects, with industrial and graphic design in the forefront. In 1961 the Society consisted of around one hundred sixty members. Following the colourful variety of the prewar period, in the fifties it was solely modernism that was firmly installed as the canonised architectural and design style. In the early sixties a handful of agile designers, again mostly members of the Society, pulled off another brilliant coup by launching the Ljubljana Biennal of Industrial Design. This international exhibition has since secured a recurrent comparison between home and global achievements and has been regularly confirming the excellence of Slovenian designers, this year for the twenty-second time.

AHAS, 17, 2, 2012 Samostanska umetnost / Monastic Art and Architecture

AHAS, 17, 1, 2012

Umetnostna kronika 35

ACTA HISTORIAE ARTIS SLOVENICA 15, 2010 (en)