Vladimir Makuc
Vladimir Makuc
(1925 – 2016)
Vladimir Makuc, a Slovenian painter and printmaker, was born in Solkan. After attending the teacher training school in Gorizia, he joined the partisans during World War II. Following the war, he graduated from the School of Arts and Crafts, continued at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, and completed a postgraduate course in restoration under Professor Miroslav Šubic. Initially, Makuc focused on printmaking, producing woodcuts, etchings, and aquatints until 1960 when he studied in Paris under Johnny Friedlender.
His work is rooted in personal motifs, largely inspired by the coastal region, the Karst, and the Mediterranean atmosphere. Bulls and various birds often appear in his prints, paintings, and sculptures, along with themes from ancient mythology. He held his first solo exhibition in Ljubljana’s Small Gallery in 1962.
In the late 1970s, he turned to painting and later to sculpture. His works remained deeply connected to nature, incorporating materials such as sand, shells, and fragments into his art. Makuc, a technically meticulous artist, is regarded as one of Slovenia’s leading printmakers. He exhibited widely, received numerous awards—including the Prešeren Fund Prize and the Prešeren Award in 1979—and in 2015, was honored with the Silver Order of Merit by the President of Slovenia.
In 2010, he donated a collection of 553 artworks to his hometown, which was featured in a monumental publication by the Goriška Museum.
“I couldn’t imagine just bare landscapes! – A living being had to appear in it.”
Work
Makuc was a significant interpreter of the Slovenian Karst environment, developing a distinctly personal poetic style. His lifelong fascination with Karst landscapes began in Hrastovlje, where as a young artist, he worked as a copyist of medieval frescoes.
Initially celebrated as a master of printmaking, he established the central theme of his work—landscapes inhabited by living beings. Recurring motifs include birds, symbolic bridges between heaven and earth, reflecting his longing for freedom and love for the Karst region.
He ranks among the distinctly original Slovenian visual artists from the first generations of graduates of the Ljubljana Academy, which began operating immediately after the Second World War. For a few years after completing his studies, Makuc maintained the realist manner inherited from the Academy. However, he soon turned towards developing his own expressive language, which he based on a refined visual vocabulary.
Throughout his long career, he explored various techniques; in graphic art, he transitioned from traditional methods (starting with woodcut, then etching and aquatint) to relief prints, while also working in painting, sculpture, tapestry, and ceramics. Makuc’s deep connection to the Karst and the coastal regions is reflected not only in depictions of birds, roosters, oxen, and other zoomorphic symbols but also in the very materiality and tangibility of his works. These are typically palpable and materially tied to the land he portrayed. He would often mix his pigments with fragments of sand and shells or accentuate the relief quality of a painting by incorporating whole shells.
Small Landscape with Birds
1986 | p.o.št. / p.d.a. / EA | III/XI | drypoint, paper
European Blue Thrush
1985 | p.o.št. | p.d.a. | EA | drypoint, paper