Selection form a donation of 2017 to the National Gallery of Slovenia
The renowned Slovenian photographer Tihomir Pinter made a gift of one
hundred and nineteen portraits of Slovenian visual artists to the National
Gallery of Slovenia in 2017. The donation consists of photographs, mainly 50 x
60 cm in size, produced during the preparation of the first of three monographs
(1984, 2008, 2012) in cooperation with the art critic Aleksander Bassin. The
project originated in a chance encounter with Andrej Jemec in 1970. Pinter's
friend Miro Zdovc, photographer at the Art Academy of Ljubljana, opened to him
the door of the studios of the Academy professors at the studio building at Svetčeva
1, while encounter with the German photographer Erika Kiffl in 1979 enticed him
to bring together the existing portraits and complete them through a
systematically organized project for a monograph.
Pinter had seldom an opportunity to visit the particular artist's studio
several times. The artists themselves often had quite specified interests in
how their image should reflect in the bi-ocular lens of Pinter's Flexaret
camera. The photographic "documentation" therefore consists sometimes
of only a few snapshots, while at other times it includes several films. Pinter
made contact copies and selected the acceptable images, developed them in
post-card format and marked them with the required processual data. The photos
in the current exhibition were produced between 1980 and 1984 in the narrative
format − to set an artist's "icon" into its context, into that
symbolic Garden of Eden, where the creation of the artist's world took place.
The portraits were thus negotiated between an artist's self-perception and the
photographer's interpretation, mining on the rich tradition of Western
portraiture.
Selection
Tihomir Pinter, Andrej Smrekar
Staging
Tina Buh, Andrej Smrekar
Conservation
Tina Buh
Graphic design
Matic Tršar
The exhibition was supported by
O.K.vir, d. o. o.
Cvetličarna Galerija Lovšin
Radgonske gorice, d. d.
27 May−12 September 2021
National Gallery of Slovenia
Narodni dom Gallery
Prešernova 24
1000 Ljubljana