From the Editor

Driven to Create: Bojan Golija's Exhaustive and Varied Printmaking

Recognized as a “father of Maribor printmaking,” Slovenian artist Bojan Golija diligently explored the expressive abilities of printmaking not only to convey his interest in nature and Slovenian folklore but also to educate younger generations. Golija’s frequent crossing of artistic approaches and particular attitude towards color led to imagery shaped by stimuli from nearby as well as Japanese woodcut tradition and unconventional procedures.

In 1954, Bojan Golija (1932–2014), a Maribor native, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana’s printmaking program. He traveled to Japan in 1957 to study and teach for seven months. After returning, he taught drawing at the Elementary School Kamnica near Maribor, then at the Maribor Teachers' College along with the Pedagogical Gymnasium. The artist was one of the first professors at the Pedagogical Academy, and he later continued his career at the Faculty of Education of the University of Maribor. In addition to his academic pursuits, he developed into a key cultural figure for the northeastern region of Slovenia.

Golija, who enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in 1949, belongs to the institution’s fifth generation of students. At the time when his expressive profile was forming as an art student, printmaking in Slovenia started gaining momentum, eventually evolving into a high-quality, endemic phenomenon in the 1950s, with lithography as the most popular technique. 

New Variants in the Continuum of Polish Poster Art

The 20th century proved a liberating era for the poster to break from its burdening position as a message-driven print announcement into a tasteful art form. In Poland, the (r)evolution extended into the new millennium, with poster as a print that transcends overt meaning.

The art of Polish poster mirrors specific cultural tendencies by linking several centuries of national printmaking tradition with the predilection for metaphorical thought and ambiguous humor. Emerging as early as the 17th century, posters gained status as a mature art domain at the end of 19th century. At that point, the mastery of conjoining words and images to dispatch a flash of “everything” has since become a specialization practiced in variegated graphic (art and design) faculties, remaining vivid anywhere from streets and museum spaces to webpages and mobile interfaces. This rich history also explains why the first poster museum was established on Polish soil in 1968, namely, in Wilanow, Warsaw. Additionally, the International Poster Biennale that initiated in 1966 still operates (the 26th edition was presented at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in June 2018). Subsequent to the “legalization” of poster as an art branch, we may observe creators’ attitudes towards this field as well as vibrant discussions, crises and new paths that have led to noteworthy developments in recent years. 

Immersed in the 2018 International Print Triennial Krakow

Conceived as a mirror image of contemporary visual reality, the 2018 International Print Triennial Krakow in Poland brought under the summer spotlight 257 printmaking projects. From etchings, relief and screen prints, to video games, installations and laboratory extensions of movable imagery, the triennial surprisingly unveiled a romantic notion of the world through the resurfacing of humanity. 

The Ambivalence of Solitude and Perseverance of Existentialist Thought

By Jelena Petrovic

Despite the continuous progress in different areas of human activity, the insignificance of the individual afflicts our time. The presented lithographs shaped by bodily imprints render an image of a mortal coping with alienation, be it in solitude or isolation. The absurd lingers, as it did a century ago, perpetually reflected in the misunderstanding of life. 

Based on an analysis of the verbal and visual language used by 20th-century existentialists, I created a body of works to demonstrate their messages' universality by fashioning a portrait that shows the denizen of today. Seventeen monochromatic prints were conceived via the traditional model of 19th-century European lithographic posters—on limestone, in large scale and as propaganda—seasoned with existentialist postulations that engage the viewer in dialogue. The series manifests the inner state of a human being, withdrawn, questioning the social order and ontological meaning. 

Collections from Behind the Iron Curtain: The Baruch Foundation

By Barbara Kalwajtys

Throughout the latter half of the Cold War, in a space above Michigan Avenue, Chicago, art dealers Anne and Jacques Baruch invited guests to peer into the rich world of art from behind the Iron Curtain. Today, although the Jacques Baruch Gallery only exists in the memories of those fortunate enough to have experienced it, the Baruch Foundation continues its mission in finding the rightful place for Central and Eastern European art in museum collections. 

On Mark-Making. Dora Maurer's Systemic Alchemy and Kinetic Captures.

Since the 1960s, Hungarian multidisciplinary artist Dora Maurer has pursued printmaking to explore creative conceptions rooted in transmutation and action. Her printmaking laboratory in Budapest functions as an arena to document progressive systematic elements in traditional intaglio format. For Dora Maurer, process became the space “to figure it out.”

Intimately Constructing Pillars of Compassion

By Eva Hnatova

The project To Touch is a process-based exploration of compassion fatigue induced by the visually saturated, 24-hour news stream. Through drawing on, hand-pressing or ironing carbon paper, a 19th-century invention for producing duplicates of textual matter, I have attempted to create a pictorial apparatus for reawakening the sensitivity of viewers to the suffering and hardship of others. 

Viktor Hulik: The Brink of Order and Chaos

Irritated by the statics of pictorial conventions, Slovak artist Viktor Hulik has been experimenting with space, color and technologies since the 1970s. His multimedia works and computer graphics disturb two types of order: the natural and the geometric. Printmaking for Hulik serves as a vehicle to navigate his continuous journey to capture the essence of change.

“. . . from my childhood, I have been fascinated by nature, by its transformations, variations, heterogeneity of shapes, colors, forms and ubiquitous motion . . .” These words of Viktor Hulik, a virtuoso of geometric aesthetics within the contemporary realm of Slovak art, precisely characterize the essence of his work while simultaneously indicating its foundations. Although his recent (geometric) work does not suggest it, landscape guided his initial expressive explorations from the mid-1970s. Nevertheless, Hulik did not begin depicting terrestrial scenery as a painter who applied classical methods. The artist’s early years made up a transitory period when he immersed himself in industrial beacons of civilization and treated engineered structures as “second nature.” This phase presented the artist an opportunity to lay down the groundwork for his ration-guided visual conceptions that he would eventually furnish with geometric forms. At the time, the underground art scene in Slovakia witnessed the subsiding of conceptual and minimalist tendencies as partakers drifted towards analytical painting. 

In Crossing the Dreams to Unnamed Reality

By Endi Poskovic

Two eloquently disquieting projects,Crossingand Dream, recent avatars of my ongoing traversal between the analog and digital realms, converge according to pillars of the printed image: multiplicity, seriality and translation. They reflect on a way of life unafflicated by temporality yet devastated by violent events in the country of my birth, Yugoslavia.

Central to my modus operandi is a certain orthodoxy of image, a persuasive visual representation revealed via expended drawing practice and manifested through a matrix printed on paper. In the mid-1990s, my strategy of developing images fortuitously advanced through expressive relief carving in conjunction with elementary hand-printing, amounting to woodcuts emblazoned with bold captions (Majestic, 2002–2018, la Souffrance et l’Aventure Series, 1998–2002). These early pieces arose in reaction to my academic training in intaglio and lithography and as a statement against the platitudes of intense debates about analog printmaking versus rapidly emerging digital variants. These past few years, I have actually expanded upon experimental inter-technological exercises, applying bit-map and laser engraving to color woodblock prints and stone lithographs. 

The Precarious Process of Hand-Printing the Whales

By Zuzana Ruzickova

Garnered in sealess Central Europe, my strong desire to see a whale prompted me to travel around the globe. I learned about the creature’s natural habitat while exploring printmaking in its elementary form—with hand-printed impressions that act as records of time, places and happenings.

The project Whales, realized in 2011–2012 in Taiwan and the Czech Republic, includes a series of prints, sounds and video. In Taiwan, I worked with Professor JiangPingWang, a marine biologist who enriched my knowledge of these animals. Even though I roamed throughout the island, my whale-spotting mission proved fruitless. I was left with nothing but to imagine the entire world of prehistoric behemoths and recreate these scenes myself through drawings. To render artwork, I turned to walls with textured surfaces that engender visual associations, as well as their impressions on translucent plastic sheets.