The 2008 bequest of Marjan Pogačnik to the National Gallery of Slovenia
contains among other things a collection of over four hundred greeting cards sent
to him by his Yugoslav colleagues and artists from abroad. The collection has a
tremendous potential for amplification and is a symptom of printmaking culture
formed in Slovenia in the second half of the 20th century. Its originator was the
Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts that gave birth to the so-called Printmaking
School of Ljubljana. The notion of the School exceeds the narrow stable of
artists sharpening their expertise in the Paris studios of Johnny Friedlaender
and Stanley William Hayter. The Biennial was a mediator of information on up-to-date
print production of the world, which stimulated domestic creativity.
Printmaking output of Ljubljana and Yugoslavia as a whole reached an
extraordinary standard in various printmaking techniques.
The idea of an artist’s greeting card is not something entirely new. Western
culture around 1900 produced an original postcard, which often carried a humorously
conceived original and unique visual message on its face side, using the form
of caricature as one of most frequently applied tools. The Munich painter
Richard Graef, among others, communicated with Matej Sternen in this manner, as
well as members of the ‘Vesna’ group of Slovenian artists in Vienna, who shared
their visual puns and scintillations through original postcards. At the time, illustrated
postcards were generously available, not just as greeting cards, but also
tokens of fundraising (Society of Sts Cyril and Methodius for Slovenian
schools), war propaganda, aid to the refugees and war orphans, triggered by commercial
accessibility of colour printing. The artist’s postcard remained the means of
intimate communication within artists’ communities and other participants in
the growing system of art institutions.
The renaissance of the artist’s greeting card occurred within the Printmaking
School of Ljubljana in the second half of the 20th century. It was not
regionally restricted. The International Print Biennial of Ljubljana was a
Yugoslav national project that gave broad prestige to the country. Along with
the Slovenian artists, other important printmakers rose from the rest of the federal
republics, such as the students of the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and
Design Đevad Hozo, Mersad Berber and Peter Waldegg, or those independent from the
Ljubljana centre: Safet Zec, Ivan Picelj, Miro Šutej, Ante Kuduz and others. Artist’s greeting card belongs to the genre of
small print that was cultivated also by the Exlibris Sloveniae Society. Its
function remained unchanged but it thrived now in the advanced system of art
institutions and art market. Printmaking techniques offered a suitable medium
for its expansion. They fetched a sufficient quantity for the exclusive
audiences. Artist’s greeting card promoted the recent production of its maker
with his colleagues, friends, and particularly with decision makers in charge
of exhibition programming and distribution of public and sponsored funds. Art
institutions made use of the artist’s print as well – International Print
Biennial, Museum of Modern Art, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, nascent
private art galleries and many others. Unfortunately, those small prints
usually ended up framed on walls. An important aspect of Pogačnik’s Collection
provide envelopes – with e.g. calligraphically written out address by Lucijan
Bratuš, the velin foliculi as protective sheets inscribed with greetings by
Vladimir Makuc, drawing additions on commercial printed reproductions by France
Mihelič, etc. Artist’s greeting card is therefore a symptom of visual culture
and social practice that marked groups of intimately and through business
connected members of cultural elite of a society that wanted to be egalitarian
and therefore sought its prestige in symbolic objects and gestures.
Author
Andrej Smrekar
Presented: Thursday, 7 December, 6 pm
7 December 2023 – 3 January 2024
National Gallery of Slovenia
Prešernova 24
1000 Ljubljana