Dušan Lipovec (1952- 2005)

Painter and publicist Dušan Lipovec was born in Kamnik. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana (Ljubljana, 1977, Prof. Andrej Jemec), and continued his studies in Canada.

He preserved the picturesque image of Kamnik, with its characteristic Small and Old Castles, in modern art. Art critic Milček Komelj called him a “poet of nature”.

Landscape, be it urban, with the depiction of countless views of Kamnik, Dalmatian villages, rarely the capital, or that pristine, pure, untouched nature, has been a theme that Lipovec has followed since his first creative years after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts. . He never turned away from it, he always looked for new laws and forms, colors in it. It was based on a concrete natural motif, which he always reworked. The motif from the concrete moved towards increasing simplification and at the same time towards an orderly painting space. We can talk about the latter mainly in his work, which was created at a time when painting in nature became a kind of sweet addiction for the artist. … «I used to have a prejudice, saying that only Sunday painters go to nature to paint. However, when I started going to painting colonies and painting outdoors, I realized new qualities and advantages of this way of working. I discovered completely new color and compositional novelties and laws, which are offered only by nature, or the so-called plain aerial painting. ”

The depiction of a known motif is deliberately deformed, reduced to minimal surfaces, which, in spite of the above, give a characteristic image from the concrete. Such are the countless images of Kamnik – cramped houses that often lean to the side, sometimes just the roofs, often indicated by the high bell towers of Kamnik’s churches, which squeeze into the shelter of the mighty Old Town hill. The depictions of Kamnik are characterized by the central placement of the motif, which is emphasized by the high image of the Old Castle above the town.

Lipovec’s artistic language really comes to life in motifs in the seaside world he loves so much. Here, the painter discovers other horizons – the color used glows with a completely different light; sometimes the individual motif seems to be lost in the steam of the hot noon, now in the moonlight, and all the time in the silence.