9. 12. 2020–8. 11. 2019 Artwork to go / Ivan Grohar - Chapel

Artwork to go / Ivan Grohar - Chapel
100+ Highlights from the UGM Collection

Every week, take the "artwork to go" from our gallery, which you can also get to know through the audio description here or the video here. As the fifth artwork to go, we present the first work in our collection, the Chapel of the artist Ivan Grohar.

This small, unassuming painting by Ivan Grohar, one of the four Slovene impressionists, represents the symbolic beginning of the UGM Collection. The Grohar Maribor Art Association, who were the first to formally organise the art community in Maribor, bought it in 1922 with the intention of founding a collection for a future gallery.

A red chapel-shrine is depicted, one of the oldest of its kind in Slovenia, located near the St. Mary of the Annunciation church in Crngrob near Škofja Loka. Even today it is still possible to identify the place where the work was created. The artist was fascinated not by the shrine itself, but by the rays of the sun shining through the tree canopies. The flickering light that dismantles objects and creates the impression of a momentary visual record of reality is a fundamental visual element of impressionism. The paint is applied quickly, and the rough texture indicates palette knife technique painting. This technique is typical of a large part of Grohar’s opus and was modelled on the Tyrolean painter Giovanni Segantini. The freshness of the forest shade and the dry heat of a summer’s day are depicted through the contrasts of greens and browns as well as yellows and violets; and contribute to Grohar’s atmosphere of flickering light. Landscapes form the core of Slovenian impressionism and create a typically lyrical mood. Grohar saw nature as a field of freedom and an escape from his personal woes, as vividly described by Ivan Prijatelj: “[Grohar is] a Slovene peasant boy … He is besotted with his lass. Why, Slovenian nature is nothing but a girl to Grohar.”