On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest Slovenian painters of the 20th century, Gabrijelo Stupica, a wonderful retrospective exhibition of his extensive oeuvre is on view in the Modern Gallery.
Stupica spent a large part of his life in Zagreb, where he studied fine arts at the academy there. Later, life took him back to his home soil, where he created until his death. Under the direction of curator Martina Vovk, the first large-scale study exhibition after the last review of his artistic career in 1968 was thus set up.
A diverse selection of as many as 300 works, thoughtfully placed in the eastern part of Ljubljana's Modern Gallery, systematically and transparently reveals Stupič's creation of initial portraits and still lifes in classical painting technique (in Zagreb in the period 1931 - 1937), dark iconographies of earthy colors (after moving to Ljubljana in 1946 ), among which the motif of the girl Lucia (his daughter and lifelong muse) appears for the first time, moving into the modernist blue of the 1960s and 1970s with the iconic image of Flora, the later experimental treatment of the painting surface with tempera, and material and simulated collages such as the series pictures of the Bride and the Farmer, to the final part of countless self-portraits from the sketchbook, right up to the last one, imbued with the bitterness of a dying life. And it is precisely the self-portraits that are the lone constant, the otherwise incredibly varied fluctuations between completely different techniques, which Stupica tackled again and again.
A rich exhibition of works of art that have never been in step with the times, but rather one step back and two steps forward, thus offers a truly extraordinary walk through the fruits of unstoppable diligence and passion that inspires and permeates with pride.
