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The Slovenian Impressionists
With the generation of Slovenian impressionists, fine art in Slovenia again arose among the liberal arts. This achievement was initiated by the Slovenian realists, who managed to display their works in the most prestigious European showrooms; however, it was the impressionists who transferred this creativity to the native soil, creating an iconic Slovenian landscape. The latter became an indispensable part of the Slovenian identity. It filled in the vacuum left by the historical painting of the last third of the 19th century. Although in this period Slovenes possessed the creative power, the patrons' knowledge and entrepreneurship simply could not yet measure up to the rising creativity.
As a stylistic phenomenon, Slovenian impressionism belongs to the 20th century as it adapted its free, improvised impressionist technique to a complex sensual comprehension. It demands more from a painting than registration of a mere retinal image; it forces a painting into conveying an existential experience, into the perception of the painter’s experience, stimulated by the motif of the painting taking shape. The light, being the basic medium of perception, gradually disintegrated into the spectral colours; thus emancipating the palette and leaving the spatial articulation entirely to the colour composition. In the opus of R. Jakopič in particular, we can follow the development parallel to the canonical European routes to abstraction.
In the ACH collection, you will find a number of suggestive images of all four representatives of the Slovenian impressionists’ generation, Ivan Grohar, Matija Jama, Rihard Jakopič and Matej Sternen, as well as those of their older and similarly sensible colleague Ferdo Vesel. Magnificent insights from the heroic era before the first world war, such as Luža (The Pond) by R. Jakopič, a “Fauvist” female portrait by I. Grohar, or the head of an old man caught in the counter-light by F. Vesel, are cogently complemented by images of their mature age, where we are taken by the modernist planarity and the flattening of space in particular in paintings by M. Jama – Krave na paši (Cows Grazing) or in the portraits of his daughters. M. Sternen enraptures us with his small format oil paintings – studies of women in bourgeois interiors and even more with his small format watercolour paintings, among which we find veritable little masterpieces.
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ACH Gallery
