Lojze Spacal in Jena

15 April - 3 May 2008
Optical Museum in Jena, Germany

Moderna galerija and its exhibition Lojze Spacal: The Painter's Eye and the Camera The transfer of the exhibition curated by Lara Štrumej, MA, from Moderna galerija, which was staged last year at the International Center for Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, is part of the larger Slovenia in Thuringia project, taking place in Jena between 10 and 17 April 2008. In cooperation with the Jeaner Kunstverein the exhibition will be mounted at the Optical Museum in Jena.

Exhibition Images:

The selection of Spacal's photographic works displayed at the Optical Museum will be slightly smaller than in Ljubljana. Nonetheless, the show will present the artist as a photographer from his beginnings in Accettura, when he made his living this way, to his mature years, when he took photographs on his hiking tours of Istria and the Carso, or while visiting dockyards, harbors, and saltpans, to gain insight into the authentic character of the life in the littoral regions and the Carso, the source of his stylized modernist artistic language. Exhibited next to his drawings, paintings, and graphic prints, his photographs thus reveal how the artist's imagination drew from the reality he first captured on film, or in certain cases, to what extent the photographs actually represented a visual prop in his transformation of the seen into a print or a painting.

The transfer of the exhibition and the leaflet accompanying it have been financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia. The Ministry also co-funds the other cultural events of the Slovenia in Thuringia project the comprehensive cultural presentation of Slovenia in Germany, with the exception of Berlin, during the time of Slovenia's presidency of EU Council. The project comprises several concerts, the above-mentioned exhibition, a symposium of experts in international law, and a tourist presentation of Slovenia by the Tourist Association of Slovenia. The sponsors of the project are Dieter Althaus, Minister President of Thuringia, Dragoljuba Benčina, the Ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia to Germany, and dr. Albrecht Schröter, Lord Mayor of Jena.