LendAvA ARTISTS LIST
dubravko BAUMGARTneR
a painter born in 1979 in Lendava, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. He lives and works in Lendava.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
dare BIRSA
Rostig 7/I. 2013 Metal plate, wood 39,5 x 103,5 cm
a painter born in 1958 in Murska Sobota, completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, where he still lives and works.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
Hoghs on a night of fire (diptichon) 2000
Oil - canvas (2x) 100 x 81,5 cm
Sebastijan ČASAR
a painter born in Čakovec in 1981, graduated in fine arts from the Dániel Berzsenyi College in Szombathely and supplemented his education at the University of Pécs, Fine Arts Department. He lives and works in Lendava.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
Cricket I. 2012
Pastel - paper 10 x 19 cm
LendAvA ARTISTS LIST Page: 2 / 8
Marika dAnCS ROTH
a painter and textile designer born in Lendava in 1950, finished her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. She lives and works in Munich.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
Mystic (Wood) 1997 Graphite - paper 70 x 50 cm
Zoltán GÁBOR
a painter born in 1922 in Lendava, completed his studies at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts. He lived and worked in Zagreb until his death in 2010.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
Northern lights over Lendava 1997 Oil - canvas 65,5 x 75,5 cm
Štefan GALIČ
a painter and graphics artist born in Lendava in 1944, studied at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts. After finishing his studies, he returned to Lendava and died there in 1997.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
Fossil-wood-XX 1991 Color woodcut 100 x 70 cm
LendAvA ARTISTS LIST Page: 3 / 8
endre GÖnTÉR
painter, was born in 1949 in Dobrovnik near Lendava. He completed his studies in the Art Department of the Faculty of Education in Maribor. He lives and works in Murska Sobota.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
Hoffhalter 1991 Mixed technique - canvas 120 x 100,5 cm
Cvetka HOJnIK
painter and textile designer, was born in 1963 in Lendava. She graduated from the College of Textile and Fashion Design, an affiliate of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Textile Engineering, in Ljubljana. She works in Maribor and lives in Lendava.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
At the cross-roads 2004 Acrylic, textile, wood - canvas 125 x 90cm
Zdenko HUZJAn
a painter born in Lendava in 1947, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, where lives and works.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
Spanish portrait 1978 Acrylic - canvas 100 x 100 cm
LendAvA ARTISTS LIST Page: 4 / 8
Ferenc KIRÁLY
a sculptor born in Lendava in 1936, began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana and completed them at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts. He lives and works in Lendava.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
In the beginning 2004 Marble 45 x 60 x 20 cm
Suzanne KIRÁLY-MOSS
a painter and art restorer born in 1937 in Chicago (USA), began her studies in New York, continued in Zagreb and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She lives and works in Lendava.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
Alpine route 2002 Mixed technique - canvas 120 x 100,5 cm
Katja PÁL
a painter born in 1979 in Murska Sobota, received her bachelor and master degrees in art from the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts. She lives and works in Lendava.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
FK335E 2012 Acrylic - wood 67 x 67 x 3 cm
LendAvA ARTISTS LIST Page: 5 / 8
Lajcsi PAndUR
a painter born in Lendava in 1913, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and furthered his art studies in Budapest. He worked and lived mainly in Maribor, where he died in 1973.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
Sunday afternoon 1967 Oil - canvas 80,5 x 100,5 cm
Ludvik PAndUR
a painter born in 1947 in Sloven Gradec, graduated from the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts. He lives and works in Maribor.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
Grove I. 1997 Oil - canvas 120 x 100 cm
Sabina ŠInKO
painter and puppet designer, was born in Lendava in 1968. She completed her art studies at the Faculty of Education in Maribor. She works in Maribor and lives in Lendava.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
Passers L2 Oil - canvas 70 x 90 cm
György ZALA MAYeR
a sculptor born in Dolnja Lendava in 1858, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. He died in Budapest in 1937.
Artwork title: Technique: Dimensions:
Victoria - Freedom rider 1912 Bronze 45 x 37 x 14 cm
LendAvA ARTISTS LIST Page: 6 / 8
A place where creative spirits excite and soothe
Each city is unique in its own way, a microcosm of diversity and specifics. And we are convinced that this is so with Lendava, which was part of a strong historical turbulence for centuries, positioning the city and its citizens now in the center of historical events and again in obscure provincial degradation. But it is as if the people of Lendava have special character features - pride, self-esteem, perhaps also the feeling of somehow being selected or unique –which might just be fed by the need for survival in any historical, geopolitical or economic situation.
Lendava is an extremely heterogeneous milieu for culture, religion and ethnics and has experienced many amplitudes throughout history, but (even in the most unfavorable circumstances) it always found a kind of reference point from which it drew its own personal sense of originality, specificity, even superiority and self-sufficiency. Maybe those words are somewhat surprising, because usually when we discuss Prekmurje, where Lendava belongs, such phrases as rurality, material and spiritual restraint, humility and goodness are used. Those were also the creative themes for Prekmurje artists during the first half and middle of the 20th century, and, consequently, outside observers took up the uncomplex and one-dimensional view of the Prekmurje region as a place of homey surroundings and suffering farmers, but happy in their simplicity; and of storks, log houses and endless plains intersected only by avenues of poplars.
Throughout history the mental habitus of Lendava’s population has been put to the test, for it was often cruelly amputated, revalued and devalued. This area has seen not only changes of states and systems owing to or following political upheavals, occupations and liberations, wars, natural disasters, but also of people. The altering of borders or countries caused many people, actually entire strata of the population, to emigrate and at the same time, new ones to immigrate. Extremely strong
fluctuations, especially at the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, conditioned the constant redefinition of the city’s identity and that of its inhabitants.
When we talk about Lendava’s fine artists, we mean the men and women who are associated with the city in a variety of dimensions. In any case, when we speak about them (with the exception of György Zala), we are touching upon 20th and 21st century artists and, by all means, we are including a highly heterogeneous group that was and still is engaged in painting, sculpture, graphics, textile formations, puppetry, and among the younger artists, although not presented here, in graphics design, illustration and photography. When we talk about Lendava’s artists, we are not just recounting the works they have created in the city itself, neither are we referring exclusively to artists who were born in the city or have only worked there; nor are we discussing artists whose works were forcefully derived from specific historical, geographical or cognitive experiences of the city. At all events, we are talking about artists who are influenced by at least three cultures, Hungarian, Slovenian and Croatian, as well as by the environmental conditions and social and cultural residue of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later of Yugoslavia. For a considerable time after their cessation, both of those long since non-existent geopolitical formations gave birth to and left many cultural impressions and reminiscences that have deeply marked and resolved the space, time and people in it.
Unlike most artists from the rest of Slovenia’s geographical area, trained mainly in Vienna, Munich and Paris, this is the first generation of Lendava artists to have attended and graduated from the Zagreb Fine Arts Academy (Ferenc Király, Zoltán Gábor, Suzanne Király Moss, Lajči Pandur, Marika Danč Roth, Ludvik Pandur), with additional studies
LendAvA ARTISTS LIST Page: 7 / 8
in Ljubljana, the USA, Vienna, Italy and Budapest, while the subsequent generation finished their schooling in Ljubljana (Štefan Galič, Zdenko Huzjan, Dare Birsa, Cvetka Hojnik, Dubravko Baumgartner, Katja Pal) and Maribor (Endre Göntér, Sabina Šinko), and the youngest, in Hungary (Sebastian Časar). Thus, the first name on our list and the only one that belongs to the 19th century is the sculptor, György Zala. The triangle between Zagreb, Ljubljana and Budapest is therefore the determining constant on all levels of the Lendava artists’ creativity. These are actually the real coordinates that establish the intellectual circle of the city’s population, whose ethnic structure kept reshaping incredibly during the last one hundred years, not always voluntarily, more often as an exigency or command coming from shifting political, border and other social necessities. It is even difficult to fit Lendava’s group of artists into the context of the terms, Prekmurian, Slovenian or Hungarian art. Ethnic sensitivity, awareness and a sense of belonging has been characterized sharply by the continuous draught of socio-political variables that dictated a broad cultural openness and acceptance of influences to the people of this area, which prevented a standstill in their perception of themselves.
Crucial, we might also say essential, to individual development, especially for creative people, is the social and symbolic network in which it is born. Speech, rituals, institutions, mythology and personality regulate to what extent one will return subconsciously to this starting point, this place of refuge that is a sort of invisible and unconscious reference point for valuation and perpetual selfexamination. We can observe just that in many Lendava artists. Although in the most diverse forms of expression and critically different categories of values, nevertheless, we can say that the natural and imaginary landscapes of the city and its surroundings are the key to shaping their artistic expression. This applies to the sculptor, Ferenc Király, to the painters, Gábor Zoltán, Štefan Galič, Suzanne Király Moss, the Lajči Pandurs, Zdenko Huzjan, Endre Göntér and Dubravko Baumgartner, as well as to Sebastian Časar. Dare Birsa, Marika Danč Roth, Cvetka Hojnik, Sabina Šinko and Katja Pal have already turned to less conventional forms of creative demonstrations and techniques,
powered by their own expression and exploration of color, material, fabric, structure, relationship, line and the space itself between art work and viewer.
In the context of artists from a town with only a few thousand residents, we like to ruminate over the term, genius loci, as though it were some fateful characteristic of the place, the protective, magical spirit that hovers about and guards some locale, and decides the number of artists and other creators for Lendava. Poems, stories, dances, characters, anecdotes, memoirs, all that was ever said or done, make up the mythology and archetype of an area and specify its present and its expression, which have their essence among tangible media, customs, beliefs, superstitions and geographical features on the one hand, and the sum of their spirits on the other. Something determined by influences, ambiguous but consistent, that certain places absorbed throughout centuries. Genius loci, as a commitment to something that has existed since time immemorial has in some indefinable way so much power over you that it defines you.
And so, as the identifiable and unidentifiable in the arc of centuries affected the creative potency of individual Lendava artists, they themselves are an important part of the town’s profile. In fact, we might say that the artists and their works are a basic element of the city’s (self-) image and, through their creative spirits, their picturesque veduta and tales can excite and at the same time, soothe.
Tanja Šimonka, Art historian
LendAvA ARTISTS LIST Page: 8 / 8
