Painting for Brian Eno, 1987, acrylic, collage on canvas and wood, 187,5 x 295 cm, Moderna galerija
We are sad to announce the passing of a preeminent Slovenian artist, the painter and professor Emerik Bernard.
Emerik Bernard was born on 22 September 1937 in Celje. In 1960, after graduating from the School of Design, he went to study painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. He graduated in 1965 under Prof. Gabrijel Stupica, completing also his postgraduate studies under him in 1968. He first worked as a freelance artist for a number of years until becoming assistant professor of drawing and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in 1985. In 1990 he was elected associate professor, and in 1995 full professor. He taught many generations of students until his retirement in 2007.
Bernard became a prominent figure in the history of Slovenian art as one of the most original and key artists of the so-called “new image” trend of the 1980s, when artists focused mainly on highly individual auto-poetics or mythologies. With his insightful reflections on contemporary painting, he also became a respected writer of essays on art.
In his early collages and assemblages in the 1970s, he explored painting in relation to modernism, the historical avant-gardes, analytical and synthetic cubism, reism, and dadaism, influenced in the latter particularly by Kurt Schwitters. He used found, everyday objects, collaging and incorporating them in the structure of the painting, coming close to the European new realism of the time.
He reached his creative peak in the 1980s, synthesizing the artistic findings of modernism into a unique postmodernist style, apparent in an excellent series of monumental paintings inspired by Istria, its architecture and other traits. Using the technique of so-called montage and designed canvases, in which he intensified the haptic qualities of the paintings and their structures and colorfulness by collaging impasto paint and found or reject materials (e.g., textiles, wood, paper, etc.), he created some of the masterpieces of this period in Slovenian art: expressive haptic landscapes with explicit tectonics, painterly palimpsests created using discarded objects. In his later works, in which parts of the paintings go beyond the frame into the surrounding space, the dynamic montage structure became more subdued and the images increasingly abstract.
Bernard’s remarkable oeuvre is the result of his extensive theoretical knowledge combined with incessant explorations, great expressive power, and complete dedication to painting.
He exhibited his works in numerous group and solo exhibitions at home and abroad, and in 1986 also at the Venice Biennale. He was a member of the Slovenian Fine Artists’ Society since 1974, serving also on the board of editors of the Society’s journal Likovne besede in 1985, the journal’s first year. In 2001 he was elected an associate member and in 2007 a full member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
In 1986 he received the Župančič Award, and in 1987 the Prešeren Foundation Award for the works exhibited at the 42nd Venice Biennale. In 1989 he turned down the Jakopič Prize. In 1997 he received the Prešeren Award for Outstanding Achievements in Fine Arts.
The Moderna galerija collection includes thirteen works by Emerik Bernard from all his key periods, some of which are also included in the permanent exhibition at the museum.
