“Vehemently, with undiminished youthful vigor, yet with a sense of measure and order that reveals a mature artist,” as Zoran Kržišnik wrote, the Trieste painter and graphic artist Lojze Spacal addressed his audience through his graphic creativity even before World War II and for decades afterward. Throughout his prolific career, he increasingly focused on crystalline solutions closely aligned with geometric abstraction, characterized by harmonious lines and solid compositions, filled with pure, symbolic colors, light, and often a tactile quality. Spacal’s graphic cycles reflect his intense love for the Karst region. As Angelo Bertani noted, Lojze Spacal is considered “the greatest interpreter of the atmosphere, rituals, and myths of the Karst landscape, both harsh and captivating,” stretching from Prosecco to Komen, from Hrpelje to Lipica, and from Vremski Britof to Nanos.

From the late 1950s onward, Avgust Černigoj also dedicated himself to graphic arts. Known primarily for his most famous period, the Constructivist phase, he retained avant-garde ideas in his graphic works, never abandoning them. His work predominantly featured the female figure, reduced to basic lines and deconstructed in a post-Cubist grid-like manner. He simplified the body to almost a symbolic form, creating figures intended to shock the viewer. Černigoj loved the moment when a figure provoked and unsettled the audience, as provocation was always close to his heart, constantly challenging viewers with questions that demanded some form of response or stance.

Another notable artist from the border regin was Bogdan Grom, a painter, graphic artist, and sculptor. After relocating to the United States, Grom primarily focused on sculpture and tapestry. However, during the early phase of his career, he experimented with various techniques, dedicating himself mainly to classical painting and graphic arts. His work was primarily centered around the figure and landscape, which he reimagined through Fauvist simplifications. At the beginning of his creative journey, Grom was influenced by Impressionism, Expressionism, and Futurism. Later, he became captivated by the Karst landscape, which introduced warmth in his color palette and purity in his forms—qualities he carried with him long after moving to a new environment. In this new setting, he distanced himself from the themes that were prominent in his homeland and created numerous works for architectural projects, palaces, squares, sacred architecture, and more.

Painter, graphic artist, and sculptor Vladimir Makuc dedicated himself primarily to graphic arts from the late 1950s for over two decades. He became a distinguished and unmistakably unique figure among the great masters of the Ljubljana School of Graphic Arts, known for his original blend of abstract visual expression and a mimetic and symbolically reimagined figurative world. His work often carried a distinctive touch of naivety, sometimes romantically gazing at the decaying archaic world of the Karst, other times engaging with the issues and fragmentation of the contemporary technocratic world. Makuc’s “graphic development progressed along two parallel tracks: the formal and content-driven, while simultaneously advancing in technological aspects, all three being in strict interdependence and organically and logically derived. He experimented with several graphic techniques, initially focusing on woodcuts, then on etching combined with aquatint, and later on in-depth, high, and relief printing,” as I noted in 1985 during his retrospective exhibition at the Goriška Museum.

Three artists, Danilo Jejčič, Pavel Medvešček, and Miloš Volarič, who were generationally close and creatively inclined toward similar explorations, devoted themselves primarily to graphic arts during certain periods and lived and worked in their native environments. Danilo Jejčič, a native of Ajdovščina, entered the Slovenian art scene in the 1970s with a notable departure from the personality-driven informel style. He focused on rational, geometric schemes and pure, unsaturated colors, presenting three-dimensional geometric forms that, as he described, were “defined and placed within the given space.” His work ventured into “allusiveness, resulting from the placement of abstract, imagination-born forms on the level of visually perceptible reality.” Pavel Medvešček consistently maintained a “continuity in motifs and iconography, alongside an interesting method of parallel cycles,” as Ivan Sedej noted. Elements of his later work, Karsika, began to emerge as early as the 1960s. His cycles, Fossils and the charming Baskets, continued into other cycles, all marked by a poignant lyricism in their search through the realm of magical realism, extending to whimsically geometric fantasies and updated historicisms. Miloš Volarič, as described by Milko Rener, focused thematically on developing “motifs from the material world, particularly animal and human figures, abstracted to their characteristic basic features.” Volarič himself remarked on his artistic pursuits: “In my landscape, peaks do not display themselves as if posing for tourists… trees do not boast… even the presence of humans would contaminate it… The landscape hovers, diminutive in its marshland and in the small, bent blades of grass in the meadows…

“For the younger generational companions, Rudi Pergar, a painter and graphic artist, and Nedeljko Pečanac, a graphic artist, sculptor, and painter, it could also be said that they, in a way, originate from geometric abstraction, which was favored by some prominent Slovenian and Primorska graphic artists of that time, although they expressed this through their entirely unique artistic approach in both graphic and other forms, as reflected in the works within the Hit collection. Rudi Pergar experimented with Informel, gestural, and expressive abstraction, but spent a considerable amount of time exploring rational constructions of geometric compositions, focusing on the play of light and the mutual influences of different color planes that distinctly followed his new concept. He was particularly interested in the interplay of color planes and the refraction of light. Nedeljko Pečanac, who, along with Slovenian and Italian colleagues, was among the initiators and founders of the international group 2xGO, was formally and thematically highly diverse, engaging in painting, graphic art, and sculpture. In his graphic work, he often used the silkscreen technique. His works in the early period are characterized by erotic figurative motifs, later transitioning to archetypal depictions of vegetative forms. He loved geometrized bodies and shapes that found their origin in the sphere.

Zvest Apollonio, who led a serigraphy workshop at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in 1970, significantly influenced the younger generation and contributed to the popularity of silkscreen printing, which remained within the confines of ‘author’s graphics’ in our region. His works are defined by sensuality and playfulness, color harmony, and the abstraction of recognizable elements, along with a strong inclination toward the Mediterranean space. Over the years, his works have, in an authorially recognizable way, distilled his view on life, his creative credo, and his historical, civilizational, and cultural attachment to and belonging to this space. His works are a view from within, embracing the inspiring blue of the sky and the sea, the reddish Istrian soil shimmering in the radiant sun, the recognizable outlines of coastal towns, and the never fully comprehensible eroticism of the female body. They are an unforgettable reflection of his noble narrative of the eternally recurring motifs of landscape and figure, which year after year, in new dimensions, revived his artistic handwriting.

Jože Spacal, a painter, graphic artist, mosaicist, and set designer, from 1972 to 1994, in eleven graphic cycles, sang a re-experienced hymn to Karst, his native region, and to the chestnut, which was ever-present in various forms and colors, often barely perceived in the background. He sought to capture the gifts of Karst nature, including the rare wheat fields, in their variability and powerful expressiveness, in a never fully discovered spiritual dimension, and in the rich interweaving of life with stones, pines, junipers, sumac, Teran vines, walnuts, and chestnuts—the gifts of a landscape that he carried deeply within himself, wherever and whenever, re-experiencing and transposing them into changing symbolic combinations, transforming them into an artistic handwriting that mirrors the rhythms and melodies of Mediterranean feeling and sensibilities, a wide range of technological and thematic combinations, and the grandeur of a restless, sparkling, seeking, and noble spirit.”

The Trieste visual artist Klavdij Palčič passionately, provocatively, and evocatively moved between pure visual art and metaphor for nearly six decades, with an unusually eloquent blend of various artistic techniques and shocking combinations, boldly yet thoughtfully navigating between gloom and vibrancy, restraint and spontaneity. With great love, he brought to life unmistakably recognizable artistic narratives, touching and suggestive, sensuously aesthetic in their appeal. In his vividly colorful experiences, he opened a whole spectrum of intellectual and emotional responses. In his graphic techniques, he expressed himself with refinement, authenticity, and in a doubly shocking and dramatic vision, as his figurative work evolved in the interplay of abstraction and figuration, remaining distinctly expressive or increasingly symbolic, with a virtuoso drawing style that blurred yet remained recognizable.

Franko Vecchiet, who established a connection between the avant-garde constructivist and modernist explorations of his environment, drew on Černigoj’s legacy and opened up widely to both classical visual techniques and the most current media and approaches. For decades, he has expressed himself in various graphic techniques, most profoundly in woodcut. He is original in his search for roots, using different materials and artistic means, including various graphic techniques, without denying his inclinations towards geometric forms and pure visual planes, along with a carefully considered selection of colors in a highly simplified color palette. In his quest for dialogue with the viewer, he encourages understanding, feeling, and acceptance of his visual aesthetic solutions and artistic credo. As he sees it, art seeks to ‘maintain the connection between memory and the present, between tradition and innovation.’

Franc Golob, who is notably recognized for his work in watercolor, where his sensitivity to the play of light and color transitions flourished, also engaged in photography and graphics in his early creative period, alongside design. In his work, he did not follow a mimetic approach to the subject but subtly established a dialogue between object and subject. As he himself wrote, the indigenous, elemental nature placed him in a context of artistic reflection that demanded a pluralistic view of art, which he has consistently embodied over the decades, allowing nature to speak through various interpretations.”

“Boris Zulian’s (Zuljan’s) artistic expression spanned multiple mediums. He worked in watercolor, gouache, oil, tempera, drawing, and also in graphics using a wide range of techniques, including etching, lithography, and serigraphy. He predominantly created landscapes of the Karst and Istria, which he poetically depicted in a vibrant color palette through stylized, synthetic artistic interpretations with a post-Cubist foundation. Zulian employed a broad color range that was optically harmonious and diverse, coming alive in bold, sweeping strokes with a palette knife to achieve a soft, pulsating light effect. In recent years, figurative elements began to emerge within his abstract vision. In 1971, along with Trieste artists Kozman, Švara, Vecchiet, Volk, and Žerjal, he founded Grupo U.

Marjan Kravos, also known for his excellent work as a set designer, is among the Trieste artists marked by the influence of their teacher Avgust Černigoj. However, after completing his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, where he learned from Riko Debenjak, Marjan Pogačnik, and Bogdan Borčič, Kravos developed his own distinctive style, which flourished particularly in intaglio printmaking. This medium allowed him to express his tendency towards abstracting visible reality with a strong emphasis on the precise rendering of individual details. For many years, he printed his graphic works in the studio of Emilio Vedova in Venice.

Sculptor Negovan Nemec was exceptional in his exploration of drawing, which served as a foundation for his work in other sculptural materials. His line was fluid, voluminous, each stroke continuous and smoothly guided on the paper. As Nace Šumi noted, his legacy includes ‘a whole series of drawings intended for the creation of various forms in different drawing styles. I am referring particularly to drawings with a simple ‘sculptural’ line that is characteristic of his creations.’ Drawing also formed the basis for his graphic works, which he focused on in his later years, exploring the expressive possibilities of graphics, particularly in the technique of color lithography, where the line was the main carrier of his message. This exploration was unfortunately cut short by his untimely death.

Lucijan Bratuš, a painter, graphic artist, calligrapher, and academic professor, joined the younger Slovenian generation in the early 1970s who understood the new figurative explorations that delved into the psychological interpretation of a new visual reality. This approach was evident in both his paintings and graphic works. His expressively conceived figures, which he developed into his own unique expression, show an affinity with the expressionist legacy of Marij Pregelj through his distinctive composition and the vigor of his hand, emphasizing the exploration of the relationship between the figure—constructed with a free interweaving of color patches and surfaces—and the undefined, planar background.

Janez Matelič also created an outstanding body of work in graphic techniques. He frequently collaborated with Zvest Apollonio and, besides serigraphy, often employed lithography and woodcuts. His work, characterized by a strong tendency toward expressive content, featured dynamic formal compositions that created richly structured narratives. A hallmark of his art is that each print, in addition to the main motif, is enriched with numerous details that appear as unusual visual flashes in the background, typically drawn from the artist’s direct perceptions of nature. His narration is vivid, humorous, and sometimes complex, filled with many bizarre elements that Matelič intentionally inserts into his intricate thematic world. His layered stories, which define most of his graphic works, are based on the interweaving of elements from both the real and imaginary worlds.

Sculptor Zmago Posega, who entered the Slovenian art scene in the 1980s with the Generation 82 and was the only sculptor who chose to explore and continue the modernist tradition, despite being deeply engaged in postmodernist pursuits, also expressed himself in graphic techniques. These techniques allowed his sculptural sensitivity for line, volume, and the interplay of artistic elements to stand out, emphasizing the sense of volume and the interweaving of forms that came to life in stone or other materials. His exploration of graphic art was also tragically cut short by his untimely death.

Klavdij Tutta, an artist from Gorizia who has lived in Kranj for decades, is full of inspiration and imagination, sensitive and vibrant, and steadfast in his personal vision of graphic and painting issues, characterized by a distinctive style and themes. Tutta’s work stems from an admiration for the beauty of the Mediterranean, Karst, and coastal areas, which he poetically transforms into his expressive credo using selected images and symbols, shaping them into an imaginary landscape that is magical and dynamic. Initially, his work was also enriched with gestural strokes that brought forth abstract forms saturated with color. Over the decades, his focus shifted to marine landscapes, with his strokes becoming increasingly serene.

Artists from the Primorska and border regions created works in various graphic techniques that required exceptional precision, consistency, and patience from the artist: each print needed a masterful hand, a keen eye, and a remarkable spiritual strength. The multi-color printing process, which they all perfected, demanded a comprehensive approach to both plate preparation and the printing itself. The collection from the Park Hotel’s larger fundus showcases artists who excelled in traditional graphic techniques, including drypoint, etching, aquatint, lithography, linocut, woodcut, serigraphy—screen printing, monotype, and mixed techniques with other media. A viewer’s attentive gaze will reveal numerous fine strokes and engravings in many subtly rendered color shades, blending into a harmonious interplay of artistic elements that create an extraordinary narrative about the aspirations, emotions, and thoughts that inspired the creative process. These works invite us to look closely, with an open heart and spiritual openness, as they speak to us about the artist’s inner world and the artistic explorations that marked the time and space in which they were created. The Hit company’s collection is of priceless value, as it speaks not only of the exceptional creators from this western region of Slovenia but also of Hit’s social responsibility and its commitment to the cultural heritage of the area in which it operates.

dr. Nelida Nemec