France Mihelič Gallery, Škofja Loka
About artist
France Mihelič stands as the most distinctive and original Slovene master of fantastic art and as one of the main representatives of Slovene partisan art. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (1927–1931), where he was strongly influenced by the Zagreb group Zemlja. In 1945 he became a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, where he taught until his retirement in 1970.
Exhibition
Two floors of the gallery host the artist's work from the postwar period, mainly from the 1960s and 1970s, which represent Mihelič's very productive creative period. Through the original iconography Mihelič's world of fiction tells stories, filled with dream-like visions, metamorphoses, but also melancholy, imbued with existential questions about birth and death. On display are some of his most recognisable motifs of famous Slovene kurent, musicians, and also mythological scenes, which he always like to form with passion. The work is distinguished for its exquisite drawing through which the author's sense for the authentic grotesque and caricature is revealed.