Jakopič is
an outstanding personage in Slovenian art. He earned a special place in the
Pantheon of our artists not only as a painter but also as a man who
strategically integrated art into a broader social context.
Rihard
Jakopič was born in Trnovo quarter in Ljubljana on 12 April 1869, into the
family of an ambitious vegetable grower, Franc Jakopič, and his wife, Neža, as
their eighth child. In 1887 he left for Vienna to study painting there, but
after two completed academic years he moved to Munich, a city that made a
decisive impact on him. There he kept company with fellow painters Ferdo Vesel,
Anton Ažbe and Matija Jama. He kept visiting the Bavarian capital, or mostly lived
there until 1900 when he returned to Ljubljana. A year
earlier he co-founded the Slovenian Artists Association and jointly with the
members organized the first Slovenian art exhibition (1900). In 1903, soon
after the hostile reception of the second Slovenian art exhibition of the
previous year, he moved to Škofja Loka. He went to Prague for a few months, and
after his return he joined organizational works for the exhibition of Slovenian
Impressionists to be held in the Miethke Salon in Vienna early in 1904. That same year he married Ana Czerny and
continued to paint in Škofja Loka, together with Ivan Grohar and Matej Sternen.
With Grohar and Matija Jama he also exhibited in the Vienna Secession the
following year.
In 1906 he
returned to Ljubljana and remained there to the end of his life. Jointly with
Matej Sternen, he opened a drawing and painting school in 1907; it operated
until the outbreak of the First World War. In 1909, with the permission of the Municipality
of Ljubljana, the painter erected his own pavilion (hence called 'Jakopič
Pavilion') on the city's plot in Tivoli Park. This was the first permanent art
gallery in Slovenia. He soon organized the first historical overview of
Slovenian painting in his pavilion. In 1918 he helped to found the National
Gallery Society which in two years' time managed to mount its first permanent
exhibition. During the Great War and its aftermath Jakopič and the rest of
Ljubljana's townspeople faced shortage, and in 1923 he managed to sell his pavilion
to the Municipality, which in turn gave it away to the National Gallery Society
the following year. When the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts was founded
in 1938, he became a member of its Arts section. The painter died on the 21st of
April, 1943, aged seventy-four.
Rihard Jakopič
was the key player in the setting up of Slovenian modern art and all mechanisms
that go with such a feat. With the help of Ferdo Vesel he managed to persuade Anton
Ažbe to open a painting school in Munich, in which the later Slovenian Impressionists
came together. When he saw one of the paintings by Ivan Grohar in a shop-window
in Ljubljana, he went to look for the artist at his home in Gorenjska region (Upper
Carniola) and encouraged him to delve into European Impressionisms. By
exhibitions in his pavilion and his activity in the National Gallery Society he
helped the native fine arts to pass into history. In his written (and oral)
criticism he made a stand on his own and other painters’ modern art language. With
his help, domestic art market was started (which, however, still remains weak).
In terms of
painting, his scope of interest in subject matter was limited: from the birch
trees of Škofja Loka, the Sava River between Tacen and Črnuče, and motifs of
Ljubljana, to visions of life in private. Initially, he combined the principal doctrines
of Impressionism (painting before the motif, sketchiness, primacy of perception)
with symbolism and Art Nouveau, while in later years he became increasingly
expressive (“Do not make an object but a vision.”). Together with Grohar, Jama
and Sternen, Jakopič was the pioneer of modern painting in Slovenia, and
jointly with them “set up the apparatus of Slovenian Impressionism” the purpose
of which was “to express the deepest revelation of the human soul”.