Maribor Art Gallery

Exterior of the Maribor Art Gallery building in 2007. In the cellar of the historical building one can find the Satchmo Jazz Club, Maribor

With its collection of more than 3,000 art works by Slovene artists from the end of the 19th century up to the present, the Maribor Art Gallery (Umetnostna galerija Maribor (UGM)) is one of the main museums for modern and contemporary art in Slovenia. Painting, sculpture, and prints are joined by photographs, video art, multimedia installations, and interactive art projects. UGM serves as a regional museum of modern and contemporary art in the area of the Municipality of Maribor, its founder, as well as in the greater area of north-eastern Slovenia. The museum also runs the Rotovž Exhibition Salon and manages the Forma Viva Open Air Sculpture Collection in the City Park. The researchers can benefit from its rich Library and Archive.

Background and venues

By establishing the Maribor Art Gallery in 1954 as the first professional institution in the field of fine arts Maribor again became a relatively important centre of artistic and cultural development that goes back to the tradition of the Grohar Art Club, which was established in the 1920s and had a pioneering role in the organised art life in Maribor. By moving into the building on the corner of Strossmayerjeva and Orožnova streets, UGM acquired about 800 square metres of exhibition space, including the representative Knights' Hall and Pillar Hall. The main exhibition venues are located in the former manor house built in the first half of the 19th century and the former church of the Celestine monastery from the second half of the 18th century.

By joining with the Rotovž Exhibition Salon in the 1980s, UGM acquired a Department for Contemporary Art and additional space for presenting contemporary visual art in the very centre of the town.

Programme

With its collection and the programme of approximately 20 exhibitions and events annually – ranging from retrospective reviews of works by Slovene artists, through solo and group presentations of visual and new media artists to international festivals of contemporary art as well as architecture and design exhibitions – UGM importantly shapes both the art scene in Slovenia, regionally and internationally. The most important international event is the International Triennial Ecology and Art, organised by the Maribor Art Gallery since 1980. The museum also collaborates with other local organisers. In 2010, for example, it hosted the exhibition Twenty-six million minutes later. New Tendencies, from the Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb in the framework of the International Festival of Computer Arts (IFCA).

Collection

The collection contains works by major artists of modern and contemporary art, particularly by those from Styria (Štajerska region), Carinthia (Koroška region) and East Slovenia (Prekmurje region). Since 1999 UGM has held the first collection of video art in Slovenia. The collection of UGM comprises mainly works acquired through a systematic purchase policy, plus donations and legacies and also a small number of works of art transferred from the Maribor Regional Museum.

Paintings and sculptures

The collection of paintings comprises major historical styles of fine art of the 20th century and represents the core of the permanent collection of UGM. The features of the UGM collection are some complete opuses of selected authors from north-eastern Slovenia, such as Janez Šibila, Maks Kavčič, Oton Polak, and Zmago Jeraj. Another focus are certain art movements, especially Slovene Expressionism and New Objectivity: the collection contains a few excellent works by Tone Kralj and France Kralj, and Fran Stiplovšek, as well as the opuses of Slavko Tihec and painter Rudolf Kotnik, the pioneers and leading figures of Slovenian abstract art of the early 1960s.

The production of the recent decades is represented by the works of Oto Rimele, Darko Golija, Jurij Kalan, Marko Jakše, Zdenka Žido, and others. The collection attracts attention also with the works of Zoran Mušič, an internationally acclaimed Slovenian painter who spent his youth and early creative years in Maribor.

Prints and drawings

Printmaking, drawing and other works on paper form a substantial part of the UGM collection, again based on 20th-century styles. Works on paper have been created by using different classic and experimental techniques and represent an interesting study material. The collection of prints includes works by all major Slovene artists; among those particularly interesting are Lojze Šušmelj's opus from the late 1960s, Bojan Golija's cycle of prints from the late 1950s that was inspired by Japanese prints, excellent works by the so-called "Ljubljana Printmaking School" works by Bogdan Borčić, a leading Slovene printmaker of the older generation, as well as works by one of the most prominent printmakers of the younger generation, Samuel Grajfoner.

Photography

UGM primarily collects photographic works produced after 1960, when photography in Slovenia became an independent artistic medium. During this time some Maribor-based photographers were also acclaimed in the wider area of the former Yugoslavia. The central part of the collection consists of works by members of the "Maribor Circle" with Zmago Jeraj, Ivan Dvoršak, Branko Jerneić, and Janko Andrej Jelnikar who donated more than 140 photographs in 2009. The museum acquires also the works by younger artists who have established themselves through photography, among them Aleksandra Vajd.

Video and new media

In 1999 UGM was the first museum in Slovenia to collect works by Slovene video artists. The collection is conceived as a historical survey of Slovene video works from the 1960s to present time. It includes the works by the pioneers from the 1960s and 1970s (Nuša Dragan & Srečo Dragan, Miha Vipotnik), and by the most important video artists of the 1980s and 1990s, when the medium was established as an independent and equal medium of artistic creativity (among them Marina Gržinić & Aina Šmid, Marko Kovačič, Andrej Lupinc, Zemira Alajbegović Pečovnik & Neven Korda). The works from the 1990s by Nataša Prosenc, Andrej Zdravič, Jasna Hribernik, Franc Purg, and Ema Kugler are presented as well as the contemporary production expanding to new media (Vuk Ćosić, Igor Štromajer, Janez Janša, Apolonija Šušteršič, Damijan Kracina & Vladimir Leben, and Son:DA).

In 2009 the selected works from the collection were presented on the To Be Continued exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Rijeka, Croatia.

The new UGM

As one of the first activities within the Maribor, European Capital of Culture 2012 project, UGM held an International Architecture Competition for the New Maribor Art Gallery (UGM), prepared in collaboration with the Architects' Society of Maribor and Chamber of Architecture and Spatial Planning of Slovenia (ZAPS). The project of the new museum on 14,800 sq. metres also includes the rejuvenation of the river Drava embankments, and the new foot bridge, adjacent to the historic Old Bridge. An international jury comprising (Christoph Grunenberg, director of Tate Liverpool, and architects Peter L. Wilson (AUS), Jürgen Hermann Mayer (GER), Hrvoje Njirić (CRO), Stojan Skalicky, Matevž Čelik, Marko Studen) selected the proposal by Hungarian architects Tamás Lévai and Ágnes Jószai.