MILENA USENIK (1934–2023)
The painter Milena Usenik, the 2021 Rihard Jakopič Lifetime Achievement Award laureate, has passed away, just days before the first anniversary of the passing of her husband, the painter Emerik Bernard.
Usenik began her career in sports: a graduate of the Faculty of Physical Culture, she worked as a physical education teacher and competed in shot put with good results. Later she went to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, graduating in painting under Prof. Maksim Sedej in 1965, and completing postgraduate studies in painting under Prof. Gabrijel Stupica in 1968.
She was best known to the public for her intensely colorful impasto works, executed with lively brushstrokes. She produced many of her works in Istria, where she and her husband occasionally lived and worked. In a long article in Mladina (23 May 1986), Igor Zabel analyzed the fullness and substantiality of Usenik’s art, also describing her reserved nature with the title of the text: “You don’t always have to be included at all costs.” She also lived in Ljubljana and Logatec, where she was close to her place of birth, Veliki Vrh near Bloke, which was a constant source of inspiration for her perceptions translated into painting.
The past decade has seen a surge of renewed interest in Usenik’s early, more lighthearted works, stylistically close to pop art. In 2015, Moderna galerija loaned a number of such works from its collection to the international Ludwig Goes Pop. The East Side Story exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest. Usenik had a solo exhibition at Mala galerija (at the time one of Moderna galerija’s exhibition spaces) in 1988, and was featured together with Bogoslav Kalaš and Emerik Bernard at the Studio series of exhibitions of promising young artists in 1975 in Moderna galerija. Her work is currently included in the Up Close: Preservation, Protection and Conservation-Restoration of Modern and Contemporary Works of Art exhibition at Moderna galerija.
Milena Usenik at raz_ume database.
