Tihomir Pinter, Detail I, 1964, Moderna galerija / Museum of Modern Art
We are saddened by the passing of Slovenian photographer Tihomir Pinter (born on 19 January 1938 in Bjelovar, Croatia.) His main focus was the physical reality of analog photography, its tangible objectivity. He believed that good craftsmanship was essential as the basis and superstructure of seeing, idea and concept.
Pinter pursued his creative interest in photography in parallel to his professional life as a doctor of pharmaceutical sciences. He started taking photographs in 1956, when his brother gave him his first camera and taught him how to work in the darkroom.
Slavko Smolej’s photographs taken at the Jesenice ironworks and the first prize Pinter won at the “Steel and Oil” Salon exhibition in Sisak in 1966 led him to start photographing subjects related to metal working, with special focus on details. He thus began creating a body of work that is today considered one of his crucial creative accomplishments. The chosen motifs led him to abstraction, expressed in compositions of details.
His interest in abstraction in art led him to the studios of Slovenian artists. He completed a series of portrait photographs Artist in the Studio in a matter of six years, published it as a book and exhibited it in Moderna galerija in Ljubljana in 1990. He was subsequently invited to portray Slovenian authors and poets for the literary supplement of the daily Delo. After his retirement in 1990, he devoted himself even more to portraying artists and men and women of letters, and from 1994 on, also composers, musicians, theater artists, and expatriate Slovenian artists. In 1995, he began to take studio portraits in his own studio.
He was awarded the title of Master of Art Photography by the Association of Slovenian Photographers, and Excellence FIAP by the International Photography Organization. He was a member of the Ljubljana Photo Club, the Designers Society of Slovenia, the Association of Artists of Ljubljana, and honorary member of the Cabinet for Slovenian Photography. In 2006, he received the Puhar Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Association of Slovenian Photographers.
He showed his work at more than 600 group exhibitions at home and abroad, and at over 100 solo exhibitions in the republics of former Yugoslavia, in Italy, Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
