 Nov 22 2024 - Mar 23 2025

 Kostanjevica na Krki

The Božidar Jakac Gallery in Kostanjevica na Krki in eastern Slovenia is showcasing a major exhibition on new realisms in Central European between 1925 and 1933, featuring 195 works by 83 authors.

Entitled Distant Gaze: New Objectivity and Realisms in Central Europe (1925-1933), the exhibition focuses on a short period when expressionism, then dominant movement in modern art, lost its momentum and gave way to new artistic directions.

"After the traumatic experience of the World War I, the 1920s saw a major turning point, not only in politics and economy but also in arts and culture. Visual arts of the 1920s developed the style of new realisms, whose often objective, resigned and ironic expression corresponded with the Zeitgeist of that era," curator Miha Colner says.

The works are arranged in four groups topicalising changes in the perception of art, technological progress, political repression and social injustice, and the influence of mass culture.

The majority of the exhibits are paintings, but there are also prints, sculptures and photographs. "This was the period when photography started appearing both in art and in print media," Colner says.

More than twenty museums have contributed the exhibited works, including 13 outside Slovenia, along with twelve private collectors.