10. 4. 2020–8. 11. 2019 Staying at Home with Zbirka UGM / Bojan Golija – Work on a Rice Field

Staying at Home with Zbirka UGM / Bojan Golija – Work on a Rice Field

Bojan Golija (1932-2013) gained his knowledge of graphic art during his studies and in specialist courses at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana as later, during subsequent training in Japan. As a young artist he was strongly influenced by his first-hand experience of the expressive power and technical expertise of Japanese woodcut, all of which had an important impact on Golja’s technical knowledge, his selection of motifs, and his attitude to the graphic plane, detail and colour.
Work on a Rice Field was created immediately upon the artist’s return from Japan. Instead of employing a matrix, Golja printed individual woodcut elements directly onto paper and produced only a singular print copy. His planar approach, simplified geometric forms and restrained colour range together produce a simple, convincing whole. The spruce plate with wide, wavy tree rings renders a varied and uneven water surface and counterbalances the smoothed surface of the two figures whose yellow hats so stand out. Through an economic use of means and a language reduced to the bare essentials, Golija manages to convey a fresh and daring image in Work on a Rice Field at a time when Slovenian art was still trying to shake off the constraints of realism. Golja incorporated a distinctly Japanese influence into his poetics in a highly original way, and thus succeeded in bringing two very different worlds together.