A Different Štefan Galič

Two exhibitions in Ljubljana and Lendava dedicated to the famous Slovenian artist

The fruit of collaboration between the International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC) in Ljubljana and the Gallery-Museum Lendava next to the Hungarian-Croatian border, the retrospective exhibition A Different Štefan Galič features the full artistic and human scope of the famous Slovenian painter and printmaker Štefan Galič. In Lendava, where a full record of Galič’s painting oeuvre is kept, the exhibition fills a gap in the scholarly treatment and interpretation of the artist, while in Ljubljana we can see Galič’s graphic production, presented in a new way. Both exhibitions run until January 10, 2010.

On view are prints, paintings, personal objects and catalogues, a part of the artist’s butterfly collection and photographs, as well as publications he designed. The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue Drugačni Štefan Galič / Štefan Galič másként, in Slovene and Hungarian, produced in collaboration with the Gallery-Museum Lendava and edited by Breda Škrjanec, who is also the curator of the exhibition at the International Centre of Graphic Arts.

Štefan Galič (1944–1997), known in the broader Slovene cultural realm primarily as a printmaker, is the finest Slovene woodcut artist of the final third of the twentieth century. His unique woodcuts, and in particular the series Records (Zapisi) and Fossils (Fosili), won him general recognition and a number of awards. Galič’s printmaking work is, from a technical point of view, extraordinarily accomplished and inventive: for him the woodcut becomes an original medium through his use of unusually rich colors and toleration of mistakes on the matrix; nature itself is his greatest inspiration.

The woodcut appeared with greater frequency in his work after 1975 and became his exclusive technique of expression with the series Violins (Violine) –the violin was also Galič’s favorite instrument. From this point on, he investigated thoroughly the properties of the wooden matrix, its surface structure, color, the flow of the grain, the thickness and patterns of the tree rings. The series Butterflies (Metulji) was undoubtedly inspired by the artist’s large collection of butterflies in all their wonderful shapes and colors. The butterfly motif is ontological for Galič, pointing to his specific view of nature and its metamorphoses.

In the Records series, the artist’s intervention in the matrix is minimized, with letters and numbers being increasingly replaced by the natural properties of the wood. Here nature and natural history begin to speak. In the late 1980s, the series Fossils appears in Galič’s oeuvre. These prints address the viewer with a certain primal, noble archaism, bestowing the artist’s work (now in the last decade of his life) with an imprint of monumentality and timelessness.