Active as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and draftsman, France Kralj was one of the key figures in Slovenian art in the period between the two world wars. His early works echoed the artistic influences of his studies in Vienna – they were expressionist, conveying philosophical and emotional depth with a certain degree of abstraction.

Family Portrait, on the other hand, shows Kralj’s adoption of the tenets of the New Objectivity painting. In the background, we can see the artist leaving his studio after he had finished his work, and in the foreground, the double image of his wife and daughter – as live models and as sculptures. The composition is visually divided into two parts, underscoring the two narrative layers. On the one hand, the painting represents a private family scene where one would expect a sense of warmth and intimacy among the protagonists, although this is not discernible in the image. On the other hand, the portrait is a representation of Kralj as a sculptor rather than a painter, as what is foregrounded is his finished sculpture of his wife and child. It is these aspects that are most indicative of one of the key principles of New Objectivity: the stress laid on matter-of-factness and thingness, as underscored by the plasticity and volume of the figures, and a turning away from symbolic emphases, and thus, in Kralj’s case, his earlier expressionist idiom.

Kralj often represented members of his family. Two more such paintings are in the next room: Town and Country Children (Portraits of the Children of the Artist’s Family, 1931) and My Wife against a Venetian Background (Reminiscence of Venice, 1932).