7. 4. 2020–8. 11. 2019 Staying at Home with Zbirka UGM / Anton Gvajc - Rest

Staying at Home with Zbirka UGM / Anton Gvajc - Rest

Like many other people from the Primorska region, painter Anton Gvajc escaped the threat of World War I to Maribor, where he became immersed in the cultural life there and established himself as both a portraitist of the local bourgeoisie and as a landscape painter. He remained true to academic art practice by employing a limited, muted colour palette, precise contour lines and accurately executed details. In his landscapes and still lifes he often resorted to romantic and decorative schemes. In the turbulent 1920s, which were full of various –isms, Anton Gvajc’s painting instead continued in the tradition, thus extending the reach of Academic Realism well into the 1930s.
The painting Heather, or Rest as it is also called, was created in the author’s later years. The painting displays a dense impasto approach, a clear composition and the author’s restrained approach to light. The genre-specific scene was carefully selected and faithfully rendered. A woman has put down a bundle of dry brushwood and sat down to rest. The hillside, covered in heather, creates a decorative background suggestive of the Art Noveau spirit. The work excels in the transparency of its meaning, a rare feature in fact of Gvajc’s painting. This simple genre scene suggests that one can only shed one’s burdens but for a mere moment of rest and reflection.