6. 6. 2025–6. 7. 2025 Ivan Kos from the UGM Collection

Ivan Kos from the UGM Collection
Riko Debenjak Gallery, Pionirska 6, Kanal
6 June–6 July 2025
opening: Friday, 6 June 2025, 18:00

curator: Andreja Borin

The Maribor Art Gallery is entering into another collaboration with the Riko Debenjak Gallery in Kanal on the Soča River. After the successful exhibition Ante Trstenjak from the UGM Collection in 2023, we are continuing this cooperation with a presentation of the Maribor artist Ivan Kos. The Maribor Art Gallery has always endeavoured to promote classical artists from our collection and give them greater visibility, especially those who have not yet gained wider recognition.

Ivan Kos (1895-1981) was one of the most important artists of the 1920s and 1930s in Maribor. The Maribor Art Gallery houses around 150 of his works: paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints. The exhibition shows a selection of the most representative works from the artist’s rich oeuvre: expressive prints from the time of his studies at the Academy in Prague, outstanding paintings in the spirit of New Objectivity, an extraordinary portrait cycle with beggars from the early 1920s and masterpieces of watercolour art.

Ivan Kos first studied painting at the Academy in Vienna and completed his studies in Prague, where he maintained friendly relations with the painter Ante Trstenjak, who had introduced him to the secrets of watercolour. Drawing and watercolour remained the artist’s most recognisable means of expression throughout his career. He used watercolours for landscapes and urban vedutas as well as for portraits. The collection of the Maribor Art Gallery also includes two of his watercolours of Kanal on the Soča River. In addition to works on paper, the exhibition also presents some of his works in the spirit of New Objectivity – but unfortunately not the painting Girl with an Orange from 1928, which is on display during the exhibition in Maribor at the Gunzenhauser Museum in Chemnitz, Germany, which is this year's European Capital of Culture alongside Nova Gorica in Slovenia and Gorizia in Italy.