Božidar Jakac

BOŽIDAR JAKAC (1899, Novo mesto – 1989, Ljubljana), a well-known Slovenian painter and graphic artist, studied at the Academy in Prague and furthered his studies in Berlin and Paris. He was an important portraitist, travelled extensively around the world and recorded his impressions from his travels in painting and printmaking as well as in photography and film. He was one of the main initiators and organisers of the founding of the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, and its rector for three terms. He was the initiator of the International Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana in 1955, twice President of the Association of Slovenian Artists, from 1948 to 1950 President of the Association of Visual Artists of Yugoslavia, as well as a regular member of the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences and a corresponding member of other Yugoslav academies, a member of the European Academy in Paris and an honorary member of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence. He has received all the main cultural state awards, and has had around 200 solo exhibitions at home and abroad. He lived and worked in Ljubljana, where he died on 20 November 1989.

Božidar Jakac was closely connected to Kostanjevica na Krki, as his mother originates from here. This was one of the reasons why, in 1974, he donated a large oeuvre of prints, pastels and oils to the newly founded gallery bearing his name. His example was followed by the artist Tone Kralj and the estate of the painter Jože Gorjup. The first opening of the three permanent displays dates back to 1976. The selection of his works and their layout in the exhibition space was carried out by Božidar Jakac himself. In 1999, after renovation of the premises, partial restoration and acquisition of new works, the display was made by the curator Barbara Rupel. The new display was designed in 2009, on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of the artist’s birth, by Andrej Smrekar, Milček Komelj, Goran Milovanović and Jovo Grobovšek. From 2023, the last redesigned permanent display, authored by Kristina T. Simončič, curator of Galerija Božidar Jakac, follows the chronology of the artist’s life and work. The exhibition features a selection of 83 works of art from the Božidar Jakac collection, which comprises of more than 2600 items. Among the works showcased in the current display are paintings, prints and drawings, which cover Jakac’s work from his early and Prague academic period, through the mature period when he depicted landscapes and portraits in his distinctive lyrical realism, to his partisan prints and the large-scale prints of his late period, which date back to the 1970s. The exhibition also contains digitised selection of sketches and drawings from his drawing diaries, made during his student period in Prague and on his travels in the first half of the 1920s. Furthermore, there is an educational display showcasing a selection of printmaking matrices, graphic tools and a painting palette.