PINXIT

The survey of works by the academic painter Rudi Španzel, which he himself symbolically called PINXIT or "He Painted It", represents a smaller, more intimate form of the exhibition, mainly due to the range of works and their formats. In its thoughtful design and the chosen focus of the paintings and prints, it goes far beyond a casual glimpse into the oeuvre of one of our most special contemporary artists. With paintings and prints from different periods of his career and a wide range of processes and techniques, despite the limited range of motifs, the installation allows us to walk through a kind of Renaissance "cabinet of wonders", in which we can recognise the complex, symbolism-laden representational world of Španzel.

The artist entered the cultural space in the 1970s with his paintings inspired by the aesthetics of neo- or hyperrealism. Although the new tendencies, characterised by photographically precise depictions of figures and objects and, at least in some segments, a connection with Pop Art, were successfully established in international art, abstract visions within the framework of high modernism were safer in Slovenia. However, it was in his unique realism and masterful drawing that Rudi Španzel found an original and distinctive expression, which marked his entire oeuvre, which today includes cycles of portraits, still lifes and allegorical compositions. While at the technological level, in painting he was keen to continue the tradition of the "old masters", he allowed himself much greater freedom and experimentation in printmaking, and was particularly taken by the new possibilities of screen-printing and combined techniques.

Judita Krivec Dragan