Ljubljana - An exhibition bringing an insight into Slovenian contemporary painting is opening at Moderna Galerija, the national museum of modern art, in Ljubljana on Thursday. Momental-Mente: Vivid Paintings brings the most recent works by 17 painters at the peak of their creativity, the show's curator Andrej Medved told the press on Wednesday.

The exhibited paintings were made mostly during the Covid pandemic and the related social isolation, while they reflect a variety of inspirations and artistic poetics.

Medved sees the exhibition as very important for Slovenian contemporary painting and for the artists who work primarily in this medium.

As he recalled, painting was somewhat sidelined after a peak after WWII, especially at Moderna Galerija as the main national art gallery.

"After a relatively intense post-WWII era of painting, with the highlights of Marij Pregelj - Gabrijel Stupica - Emerik Bernard, a decades-long suppression of painting followed, especially at the central national exhibition centre," he said.

Medved had curated a similar exhibition at the Monfort Gallery in Portorož, expanding it now with more artists and dividing them in four segments, each bringing five to six works by several artists.

His wish was to present "a new wave of painting" which emerged in the new millennium, especially women artists, selecting four for the Illumination segment: Suzana Brborović, Nina Čelhar, Maruša Šuštar and Joni Zakonjšek.

As Čelnar has told the STA, she has always included architectural elements into her paintings, once exteriors, but more so interiors during the Covid period. Her paintings are not gloomy, as she wants to represent the inner search for peace and harmony through soothing compositions.

Zakonjšek's paintings are also meditative, as she had looked for inspiration for them in nature, and wanted to draw attention to the deep interconnectedness of everything that exists.

The segments Medium: Rich Colours and Darkening are all-male, featuring Živko Marušič, Marko Jakše, Aleksij Kobal, Robert Lozar, Ivo Prančič, Mitja Konić, Matej Čepin and Miha Štrukelj.

Prančič said about his large dark painting that the work could symbolise life, as it depicted a cradle and a baptis. He also pointed to the inscriptions "epidemic" and "pandemic", which are interesting because the paintings date to 2018.

Curator Medved meanwhile selected Barbara Drev, Ira Marušič, Staš Kleindienst and Katja Pal as newly-discovered new painting artists under Discovery of New Painting.

Pal said that with her works reminiscent of geometric figures which lack something, she wanted to capture a sense of emptiness in the human being.

Nika Zupančič has meanwhile got her own segment - Nika's Deep Blue, which features a huge painting made of 40 smaller paintings on an entire wall.

The exhibition is the first large-scale public event following the renovation of the gallery's roof and last year's floods, which affected the gallery's production.