On the 100th anniversary of the birth of dr. Emilijan Cevc

This year marks the centenary of the birth of the great Slovenian art historian, doctor of history and theory of art, honorary citizen of Kamnik Emilijan Cevc. Emilijan Cevc was born on September 5, 1920 in a trading family in Kamnik, right in the house where the Miha Maleš Gallery is today. After graduating in 1940, he enrolled in the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, where he graduated in 1946 and received his doctorate in 1952. In 1962-63 he continued his studies as a scholarship holder of the A. von Humboldt Foundation in Munich. From 1950 he worked at the art history section of the Historical Institute of SAZU (later the Art History Institute of France Stele (ZRC) SAZU in Ljubljana, from 1968 as a scientific advisor and led it for 20 years as manager (from the establishment of an independent institute in 1972 to 1992). He became a corresponding member of SAZU in 1981. He taught art history at the Ljubljana Academy of Music and the Faculty of Theology for several years in 1985. He has lectured several times both at home and abroad.
In his youth, Cevc established himself as a follower of contemporary art events, which he represented in reviews and accompanying texts in exhibition catalogues. In his research he devoted himself to medieval art in Slovenia, primarily to medieval sculpture; he also researched sculpture between Gothic and Baroque. In an independent publication entitled Slovene Art, he published an extensive overview of the entire Slovene art from the early Middle Ages to the 20th century. He participated in the preparation of various exhibitions in Ljubljana and elsewhere and wrote accompanying texts for catalogues. He has published more than 350 papers in numerous professional journals and proceedings, most of them in the Proceedings of Art History, Loški razgledi and the Kamniški zbornik; he also wrote on ethnographic and archaeological issues.
He regularly visited the Kamnik Museum, as he befriended the painters Maksim Gaspari and Miha Maleš, who had been exhibiting in Kamnik as early as the 1960s. He also became closely associated with Kamnik at an important symposium on the 750th anniversary of Kamnik (1979) and on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Franciscans. The painting Jesus’ conversation with his parents dedicated one of his last treatises, published in Kamniški zbornik in 2002.
Emilijan Cevc died on January 30, 2006. He is buried in Kamnik.