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Temporary exhibition
FASCISM AND SLOVENIANS - SELECTED IMAGES
14th January to 5th March 2010, Kulturni center Lojze
Bratuž, Drevored 20. septembra 85, Gorica, Italia
"A camp is a camp, there is no good reason to be optimistic for
someone who was imprisoned to be mentally and physically crushed.
Even the appearance of this barricaded and guarded place is
barren – tents, barracks, bunk beds, guard towers, toilets,
medical building, cauldron. People behind the wire, people under
guard, people in a line with mess tins, starving, dirty, sick -
such image of life, disgusting and rough, cannot be any
different from the image of humiliated and dishonored humanity,
the image of crushed human dignity.” (Filip Kalan: Veseli
veter - Happy
Wind, Ljubljana 1975, p. 233)
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In this paragraph, Filip Kumbatovič
captures the whole visual repertoire of the works Slovenian
artists created in Italian concentration camps. There are
surprisingly many of them. Numerous drawings, some smaller
canvasses and a statue here and there, all these were made in
the hard camp conditions.
All these images and creations were not
made only because Italians - contrary to Germans - permitted
such artistic endeavors, but also because they were created as
consequence of the creative urges of the artists themselves.
They did not consciously create artistic documents - later their
works became proof of repressive methods - but also recorded the
daily life in the camp, sometimes dispassionately and almost
drily. They painted images of hard lives, senseless existence
away from home and family. Slovenian painters in Italian camps
were not forced to use burnt matches to draw, as was Vladimir
Lakovič in Begunje prisons, they were not limited to small
pieces of paper which were easier to hide from the Nazis, as was
necessary for Vlasto Kopač in Dachau and Jože Polajnko in
Mauthausen.
Generally, there were no problems with
painting materials in Italian camps, relatives sent them with
packages for their relatives, or they were even given by the
members of the camp administrations, who did enjoy having their
portraits done, especially if the portraitist was of such renown
as for example Nikolaj Pirnat, who was the best Slovenian
painter of the time. In general, the Fascist rulers were so
convinced they have nothing to hide, and even this involuntary
concentration of people, in this case mostly Slovenian, was for
them, the heirs of thousands of years of glorious culture,
something completely normal.
A lot of drawing was done in Italian camps. Contrary to German
camps, there are generally no documentary movie recordings of
Italian camps, even photos are quite rare. And since Italians
soon after the capitulation erased all traces of the camps from
the land, the material proof was gone as well: camps simply
disappeared and instead of the remains, only monuments and
memorials with the names of the dead prisoners remain (even they
not everywhere). The most monumental is the one on the island
Rab, where the strictest camp was. But this monument was erected
by the Yugoslavs.
Even if any of the camps remained
intact, it would be hard to re-live the events in it; we would
have to rely on tales and memoirs. So the art works, mute as
they are, speak of the lives in the barracks and tents, in the
meetings and behind the barracks. We can see a group of
prisoners talking, others enjoying the sun, yet others writing
or drawing. There are many, many faces, portraits and
caricatures, staring at us bored and untouched. Of course, these
are images and bodies of people with names and surnames.
The rich artistic corpus also includes
images of women and the elderly, and the sick and starving
children. Italians did not exterminate as the Germans did, but
they did stand aside and watch when hunger, diseases and
epidemics decimated the prisoners. So in some images we can see
the dead prisoners too. All these motifs can be found in these
precious works and more: even fantasies and memories of better
and more precious times than what they were left with.
If the muses in Slovenia during the
occupation remained mostly silent and there was a harsh
ideological battle in the form of drawn propaganda in the
triangle: occupator-partisans-home guards, the camps Gonars,
Renicci, Padova, Monigo, Visco and others became centres of
Slovenian painting culture. They contained university educated
artists such as Nikolaj Pirnat (Gonars), Drago and Nande Vidmar
(Gonars, Renicci), Vito Globočnik (Monigo, Padova), Stane Kumar
(Gonars), Vlado Lamut (Monigo, Gonars). The painter Ljubo
Ravnikar was creating his works in exile in Italian towns
Cassoli and Corropoli. Various Italian prisons were locations
where sketches by Ivan Čargo were created. The painter Ivan
Miklavec spent the war in 10 different camps, some Italian. The
artists even had exhibitions, and in the summer of 1942, there
was a painting school organized in camp Gonars, led by the older
artists. The young talents were given new knowledge there. And
self-taught artists created important opuses in Italian camps
too: Slavko Balentin, Franc Boštjančič, Otmar Drelse, Janez
Garbajs, Saša Kump, Janez Lajevec, Jakob Savinšek, Jože Dular,
Rajko Šubic, France Smole, Marijan Tršar and many others, some
anonymous.
Text
by Iztok Durjava
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Contact
Jožica Šparovec
e.
jozica@muzej-nz.si
t. 01 300 96 29
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