In 2018, the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
will celebrate its eightieth anniversary and the National Gallery of Slovenia
its hundredth anniversary.
In
the past, the two institutions were connected at the very beginning on several
occasions. In 1927, the National Gallery published a promotional booklet Naša največja
kulturna naloga. Akademija znanosti in umetnosti [Our most important cultural task: Academy of Sciences and Arts] which
informed a wider public about the necessity to found an Academy in which “our
best men will have the opportunity to foster scientific work, our nation will
receive from it a great deal of encouragement for further participation, all
our educational organizations will be offered inflow of fresh ideas and new
aspirations”. At that point, a proposal was filed with the Ministry of
Education for an act for the founding of the Academy. On the initiative of the
Scientific Society for Humanities, in addition to the National Gallery, also
the Slovenska matica society and the Pravnik [Lawyer] society were among the
proposers, later the University of Ljubljana as well. The Narodni Dom palace,
the mother house of the National Gallery of Slovenia, initially served as a
shared home of the two institutions. The founding general meeting was summoned
in 1937, and the efforts eventually bore fruit the following year, when on the
7th of September 1938 the decree was issued on the founding of the Academy of
Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana. The institution was given the full name it
bears today only ten years later.
Several members of the National Gallery’s
administrative bodies were artists who later became the first academicians when
the Slovenian Olympus was founded in 1938. The National Gallery and the
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts remained closely related also later,
since the Gallery’s expert commission, or its corresponding professional and
administrative bodies, included academicians as a rule. Between 1938 and 2018,
seventeen Slovenian painters, two non-Slovenian and four sculptors became
members of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts; sixteen of them are
deceased, so there are seven artists academicians at present.
In the celebration year of the Academy, the exhibition
in the National Gallery includes sixty-nine works by twenty-three artists,
members of the SASA. Individual works by them render possible an insight into
the scope of creative production and artistic tradition of the past eighty
years.
The exhibition of artists, members of the Slovenian
Academy of Sciences and Arts, presents a selection of the most prominent works
from the oeuvres by painters Rihard Jakopič, Matija Jama, Maksim Gaspari, Anica
Sodnik-Zupanec, Gojmir Anton Kos, Božidar Jakac, France Mihelič, Avgust
Černigoj, Lojze Spacal, Zoran Mušič, Gabrijel Stupica, Janez Bernik, Andrej
Jemec, Valentin Oman, Emerik Bernard, Metka Krašovec and Jožef Muhovič, Krsto Hegedušić and Toshihiro Hamano, and sculptors Lojze Dolinar, Zdenko Kalin, Boris Kalin
and Drago Tršar.
Exhibition project
National Gallery of Slovenia
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Project leaders
Mateja Breščak, Zoran Mezeg, Andrej Smrekar
Texts by
Milček Komelj
Works of art selected by
Andrej Smrekar, Mateja Breščak, Milček Komelj
Restoration-conservation for the exhibition
Andrej Hirci, Miha Pirnat Jr., Simona Škorja, Martina Vuga
Graphic design
Ranko Novak
Exhibition set-up
Andrej Smrekar
Loaners of exhibits
Bela Krajina Museum, Metlika
Museum of Dolenjska, Novo mesto
Božidar Jakac Art Museum, Kostanjevica na Krki
Lojze Spacal Gallery, Štanjel
The Stud Farm Lipica
Koroška Gallery of Fine Arts, Slovenj Gradec
Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana
Hermagoras Verein, Klagenfurt
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the RS
National Gallery of Slovenia
private owners
and artists
Exhibiton was made possible by
12 April – 3 June, 2018
National Gallery of Slovenia
Prešernova 24
1000 Ljubljana