Staying at Home with Zbirka UGM / Zmago Jeraj - A Dog
Staying at Home with Zbirka UGM / Zmago Jeraj - A Dog
Zmago Jeraj (1937-2015) is one of the key personalities who helped generate and shape Slovenian fine arts of the second half of the 20th century. Jeraj established himself in different contemporary styles that tracked the movements of his time; nevertheless, he has managed to preserve his independent, often humorous and ironic sense of interpretation. Among others he is seen as a member of the Expressive Figurative Art circle, which was close to New Figurative Art and Pop Art in Europe and the USA in the 1960s.
The centre of the painting is dominated by a dog lying on the ground, its proud head turned towards the viewer. The setting in nature is visually represented by individual clusters of grass and a tree trunk with stunted branches. In the background the painter outlined a block of flats with a Fiat 500, a much-coveted object at the time, parked nearby. Jeraj applied witty paraphrasing of the original Pop Art critique of consumerism. The situation here in Slovenia was far from the conspicuous consumption of material goods typical in the West. Here one waited patiently for the goods ordered, sometimes as long as several months. The irony-rich message is conveyed through the image of the dog, of devotion and loyalty personified, set against the background of blue, the colour of calm and wisdom. The only provocative colour accent is provided by the dog’s collar, which establishes a meaningful symbolic relationship with the red car lights. The painting’s most pronounced features are the complete absence of an illusion of depth, a systematic reduction of both colours and depicted objects and its simple composition.
