Calendar of events - January 2023

Gallery Miha Maleš, Glavni trg 2, Kamnik

Wednesday, January 18, 2023, at 6 p.m

The first public tour after the exhibition

JAKOB SAVINŠEK – 100

The first public tour after the new exhibition of the Slovenian sculptor and compatriot from Kamnik on the 100th anniversary of his birth, Jakob Savinšek (1922-1961). The exhibited works are from the collections of the Miha Maleš Gallery, Dolenjski muzej Novo mesto, the National Gallery and the Modern Gallery.  After the exhibition, the exhibition curator Saša Bučan will be in charge.

Jakob Savinšek was born in Kamnik on February 4, 1922, where he attended the first four grades of elementary school. In 1929, the family moved to Ljubljana, where Jakob finished the eighth grade of high school with honors and enrolled in the medical faculty. His study path was interrupted by the war. In 1942, Jakob and his brother Jure were taken to the Gonars concentration camp, from where they returned at the end of the same year. Jakob supported his family by tirelessly painting portraits and drawing floral still lifes, and continued to train and develop his drawing talent with the painter Rihard Jakopič. In the circle of the writer Ivan Mrak and his wife, the sculptor Karla Bulovec Mrak, he also received his first instructions on the path of sculpture. It was here that he met his life partner, actress and poet Milo Kačič.

In 1945, Jakob Savinšek enrolled in the first semester of the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, majoring in sculpture (he was taught by Boris and Zdenko Kalin, Frančišek Smerdu and Peter Loboda). He graduated in 1949 and his son David was born in the same year. In 1950, Savinšek rented the former studio of the sculptor Frančišek Smerdu. For the artist, the 1950s were years of travel, discovery of art and association with many actors of the Slovenian and wider European cultural space, and they also brought him his first solo exhibition in the Mala galerija in Ljubljana, as well as his first commissions for sculptural monuments (Celje, Novo mesto, Ptuj, Trenta). This was followed by a larger solo exhibition in the Jakopič Pavilion and the Moša Pijade award, which enabled him to travel to England and France. This was followed by numerous trips to European cities and new orders for public monuments, including the monumental statues of Ivan Tavčar on Visoko in Poljanska dolina and Simon Gregorčič in Kobarid.

Rudolf Maister’s birthplace, Šutna 23, Kamnik

Wednesday, January 25, 2023, at 6 p.m

Maister’s evening

Dr. Peter Krečič

PLEČNIK AND MAISTER

In his Plečnik and Maister lecture, dr. Peter Krečič will first recall last year’s 150th anniversary of the great Slovenian architect Jože Plečnik, who was only 2 years older than the soldier and poet Rudolf Maister. Above all, this time’s lecturer will connect and present two giants of Slovenian history in different circumstances and events; which includes, for example, Plečnik’s plans for Maister’s tombstone in 1934, shortly after the general’s death, and four years later, in 1938, the plans for Maister’s tomb at the Pobrežje cemetery in Maribor.