The Slovenian Illustration Biennial, which has been organised since 1993 by the Illustrators Section of the Slovenian Association of Fine Arts Societies (ZDSLU) in collaboration with the Cankarjev dom Gallery, is without doubt one of the key cultural events, bringing to prominence artistic illustration, while at the same time very successfully bridging the gap between superlative fine art and the widest public audience. For this reason, this year Banka Slovenije’s Little Gallery is starting off its collaboration with this event, an exhibition of the winners of the previous Biennial that also serves to herald the 14th Biennial, which has been postponed until autumn this year.
Smrekar Gold Plaque recipient Hana Stupica forged her exceptionally perfected and distinctive style from an early age. Her book illustrations are proper little studies in their realism, while consciously referencing and boldly developing a dream-like and playful idiom of images. Stupica’s illustrations possess the momentum of cult recognisability and originality, linking up the charmed materiality of the Northern Renaissance, the exaltedness of romanticism, and also a direct vitality that resonates with the current zeitgeist.
The work of David Krančan, who is famed as the incisive illustrator of the Dnevnik Objektiv title pages, is distinguished by an extraordinary compositional dynamic and varying levels of narrative that subtly articulate social problems and often address them from the perspective of the “little guy”. Krančan frequently addresses the issues facing individuals and society through the images of animals, both real and fantastical, such as in the comic strip Pijani zajec (Drunken Rabbit), which harnesses an exceptional subtlety of drawing and narrative to articulate the well-known hardships of everyday life.
A consummate artist, unstoppable with the pencil, Milan Erič is the recipient of the Hinko Smrekar Grand Prize at the 13th Slovenian Illustration Biennial, and is regarded as a legend of this genre. The mastery he achieves through his relaxed and nonchalant drawing, links together humour and an extraordinary, generation-spanning energy. His illustrations are full of radiant irony, and at the same time a forceful affirmation of life and art. The lucid mischief of Erič’s images is the best guarantee of the future of illustration: animatedly reconsidering our present in order to create the projection of a better future.
Artists: Hana Stupica, David Krančan, Milan Erič
MGBS Curator: Vladimir Vidmar
Exhibition created in a collaboration with the Slovenian Association of Fine Arts Societies.
