ART EXHIBITING IN SLOVENIA, FROM THE EARLY 19TH CENTURY TO TODAY: 1969–1996

During this year’s seminar we will discuss the development of visual arts, the exhibition practices, and art institutions in Slovenia – as well as in the Central European and wider international context – in the years from 1969 to 1996. In the last decades of the 20th century, the field of visual arts was, both globally and in Slovenia, dynamic, experiencing development and ongoing changes on all levels (increased institutionalization, biennialization, market growth, new artistic and exhibition practices, etc.). In Slovenia, art events were also influenced by politics: Tito’s death and the turbulent 1980s were followed by the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the early part of the 1990s. Rather than a stable federation, we experienced a multiplication of independent countries fighting among themselves, and the socialist system was replaced by a political party system and capitalism. 

We will explore how visuals arts and exhibitions developed in this politically charged environment. We will discuss the relations between exhibitions and art, and determine what kind of exhibitions were successful in Slovenia and what their impact was. We will pay special attention to who organized and financed exhibitions (and why), and how artistic status was structured through them. We will further pay attention to how the feminization of the art field occurred and new art schools were opened during this period, etc. The common thread of the lecture will be the discussion of selected exhibitions, making a chronological arc from the practices of the OHO group in the late 1960s to the international biennial exhibition Manifesta in Ljubljana in 2000. The internal logic and principles of the operations of the Slovenian art system will be revealed through the interpretation of these connected but diverse phenomena.

Beti Žerovc, head of the programme

IVANA BAGO
Yugoslav Fanonism in Three (Exhibitionary) Acts: 1950/1972/1989
24 May 2021, online lecture
Read more
Video recording

ANA EREŠ
Exhibiting Yugoslav Art at the Venice Biennale (1948–1990): A History of Shifting Representations
26 April 2021, online lecture
Read more
Video recording

BRANISLAV DIMITRIJEVIĆ
“New Art Practices” in Exhibitions and Institutional Policies in Serbia, 1967–1983
30 March 2021, online lecture
Read more
Video recording

CONVERSATION WITH MILENKO MATANOVIĆ
22 May 2017, Faculty of Arts, Aškerčeva 2, Ljubljana (lecture room 343)

Milenko Matanović who in the 1960s was a member of the OHO Group, made some of Slovenian iconic works: Triglav (1968), Wheat and Rope (1969), Project, 30 April 1970, The Constellation of the Candles in the Field Corresponds to the Constellation of the Stars in the Sky (1970). At the beginning of the 1970s, he moved to the US, where he founded and until recently ran the Pomegranate Center, which primarily helps urban neighbourhoods and other communities plan and build common gathering areas.
Read more
Video recording

Organized by: Department of Art History of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana and Igor Zabel Association