National Gallery of Slovenia

The National Gallery of Slovenia (Narodna galerija) is the main art museum in Slovenia. Its area of activity lies predominantly on the Slovene art from the 13th (late Mediaeval period) to the early 20th century. The permanent collection represents the core of the activity of the National Gallery of Slovenia. Since 1997, when the new wing of the institution was built, the collection is divided into two parts: Art in Slovenia and European Paintings. The National Gallery regularly prepares temporary thematic and monographic exhibitions and events in order to present certain themes from Slovene art and bring selected phenomena of art history closer to the public.

The gallery is appreciated for its educational activities which employ different methods to reach target groups from pre-school children to high school students to adults. The National Gallery of Slovenia Library gives visitors access to the latest periodicals and published books on Slovene art and the art of the east Alpine region. The National Gallery also loans its artworks and photo material for exhibitions and publications following international standards. It is also possible to hire the gallery spaces for events.

History

The National Gallery of Slovenia was founded in 1918 as the National Gallery Society with the aim of establishing a museum of Slovene fine art. In a relatively short time it succeeded in bringing together works from both public and private collections, including works by Slovene artists purchased by the City of Ljubljana and works belonging to the Society for Christian Art; it also began to systematically purchase other works of art.

The National Gallery was originally housed in the Kresija Building, where a permanent exhibition was opened to the public in 1920. An important acquisition was 90 paintings from the Strahl Collection. In the early 1930s the gallery was also allocated casts of classical sculptures and works belonging to the National Museum of Slovenia. Then in 1933, after extensive renovation, the National Gallery opened its Narodni dom building, where it remains to this day. After the Museum of Modern Art opened in 1947, many of the National Gallery's 20th-century art works were transferred to the new museum.

Collections

From its inception the National Gallery has systematically and continuously collected Slovene art in order to provide a comprehensive survey of artistic development in Slovenia. It also collects some works by artists from other European nations, presenting them in different arrangements. However, the gallery had to wait for larger premises – achieved by the construction of a new wing in the early 1990s – before it could present a permanent collection of European Old Masters. This collection is now displayed in the upper rooms of the new wing while on the ground floor there is an exhibition area for temporary exhibitions, educational activities and the National Gallery of Slovenia Library.

Art in Slovenia

The Slovene art collection represents the core of the activity of the National Gallery of Slovenia. The medieval collection consists mainly of Gothic sculpture from the late Romanesque to the early Renaissance periods, plus some original fragments of Gothic frescoes. The survey continues with 16th- and 17th-century art, in which Baroque paintings are particularly well-represented. Representative works by masters such as Anton Cebej, Valentin Metzinger, Franc Jelovšek, and Fortunat Bergant are presented in the main hall. The survey of the Baroque period is complemented by some selected sculptures, most of them made by artists from Štajerska. The Classicism section is best represented by the monumental paintings of France Kavčič. The Biedermeier and Romantic period section includes portraits by Jožef Tominc and Michael Stroj and landscapes by Marko Pernhart and Anton Karinger. The survey of Realism focuses on the work of the Šubic brothers, Janez and Jurij, on the important educator Anton Ažbe, and on Jožef Petkovšek. The presentation of the period is enhanced by popular paintings created by Ivana Kobilca. It is followed by the generation which introduced Modernist creative trends to Slovene painting. Four painters (Rihard Jakopič, Ivan Grohar, Matija Jama, and Matej Sternen), traditionally conceived as the Slovene Impressionists, combined different contemporary art trends, from Impressionism to Divisionism, to create the foundations for the development of modern art in Slovenia. The survey concludes with a generation of sculptors who are an important counterpart to the painters of the modernist period. Works by Alojzij Gangl and France Berneker are especially prominent.

European Paintings

Opened in 1997, the permanent collection of over 150 European paintings dating from the late-14th to the 20th century is the fruit of research work carried out by Dr. Ksenija Rozman in cooperation with renowned Italian expert Professor Federico Zeri. The collection is divided into individual schools: Italian (the largest group), Spanish, French, Flemish and Dutch, German and Central European schools, and painters of the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the late Gothic works, the triptych (1511) of the Knillenberg family by Marx Reichlich is of particular note, as are the paintings of Luca Giordano among the Italian Baroque works, and the works of French portraitist Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun among the portrait collection. Prominent among the German painters are Paul Troger and Martin Johann Schmidt (Kremser-Schmidt), while the modern paintings include a remarkable still-life by Aleksej von Jawlenski and a landscape by Giorgio Morandi.

Exhibition programme

The museum's programme counts approximately 20 thematically and epochally diverse exhibitions and events per year. The majority of them are prepared by the house curators, some are acquired by exchange with international institutions.

From April 2008 to February 2009 the museum featured the very successful exhibition The Impressionists and their Time 1890–1930 which attracted 112,000 visitors, a record attendance for an exhibition of this kind in Slovenia. The exhibition was prepared by house curators on the occasion of the Slovenian Presidency of the European Union and the 90th anniversary of the National Gallery of Slovenia. The exhibition tried to contextualise the historical environment of the late 19th and early 20th century with works of four Slovene master Impressionists &dash; Rihard Jakopič (70 works), Ivan Grohar, Matija Jama (exhibited 26 paintings from each) and Matej Sternen (more than 26 works)– and many famous fellow Impressionist artists, such as Anton Ažbe, Ivana Kobilca, Ferdo Vesel, Ivan Vavpotič and more. Additionally the show foreshadowed the sculptural, photographic, and architectural achievements of the time, when the 1895 Ljubljana earthquake spawned a "revival" in the city as over 400 new Art Nouveau, particularly Secessionist, buildings and significant monuments sprang up in the re-construction period from 1986–1910.

The resounding success of the Impressionist exhibition was denoted by the parallel exhibition of Youthful Impressions which exhibited paintings created by children who participated in educational activities and workshops related to the exhibition The Impressionists and their Time 1890–1930. All together 1,800 pre-school children, 8,700 primary school children, and 12,600 high school students visited the Impressionist exhibition, reflecting the efficacy of the museum's pedagogical mission, in this case, to pass on the legacy of the great Slovene Impressionists to the new generations.

A logical continuation of these two exhibitions was that of late spring 2009, Polish Painting circa 1900, Impressionism and Symbolism prepared in cooperation with the Polish National Museum.

At the very end of 2009 a facsimile edition of the Iconotheca Valvasoriana was published by the Janez Vajkard Valvasor Foundation at the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts (SAZU) in 17 volumes. They have been donated to the National Gallery by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. Prints, drawings and watercolours of various formats, which Valvasor bought on his travels across Europe between 1659 and 1672, and had bound into eighteen books (today one lost), were arranged by the author according to technique, the artist's ethnic origin and themes: depictions of the Old and New Testament, images of saints, antique motifs and diverse secular genre scenes, portraits, coats-of-arms, vedute, maps, as well as the animal and plant kingdom. Among them are works by Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Martin Schongauer, Jacques Callot, as well as other European masters of the 16th and 17th century. The facsimile edition of the Iconotheca Valvasoriana is an important acquisition of the library fund of the National Gallery of Slovenia.

In addition to exhibitions prepared by its own curators, the National Gallery also hosts exhibitions prepared by other Slovene organisations. Among them it provides the venue for the Biennial of Slovene Visual Communication.

The National Gallery also prepares monographic exhibitions of Slovene and international authors, for example the 2008 exhibition What I Have Seen 1968–2008 by a personality central to Slovene graphic design and illustration, Kostja Gatnik. In summer 2009 together with the TR3 Gallery, the National Gallery featured an exhibition of 117 photographs by American artist Robert Mapplethorpe, one of the most important conceptual photographers of his generation.

All exhibitions and events are well-documented and presented on the gallery website in English language the documentation comprehend events since the middle of 2006.

International cooperation

With partners like the Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana, the National Gallery of Slovenia has participated activities of the international Réseau Art Nouveau Network, which has received funding from the EU programme Culture 2000. Concurrently with the exhibition The Impressionists and their Time 1890–1930, the National Gallery presented the multimedia presentation Art Nouveau & Society – a short and concise presentation of the social and economic situation in Europe at the turn of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, which created favourable conditions for the development of the pan European movement for the modernisation of art: Art Nouveau.

The Robba Fountain

Since September 2008 in the entrance hall of the National Gallery of Slovenia the restored original monument of national cultural heritage – the Robba Fountain is on display. After the original fountain was removed from in front of Ljubljana's town hall and replaced by a copy, it now – refurbished and restored – resides in the space which was primarily constructed for this purpose.

External links

National Gallery of Slovenia

Contents