Young Božidar Jakac

The first fine art presentation in the series of exhibitions which we intend in the future to stage for the public, and in this way to provide in self-contained thematic and substantive entireties a presentation of the rich creative heritage of our greatest fine artist, is an exhibition entitled Young Božidar Jakac. It showcases two periods of the artist’s life, the period prior to his studies and his period of studies at the Prague Academy (from 1910/1911 to 1923).

The first steps that Jakac took in the world of the arts were literary and musical in nature, since at first he could not decide which branch of the arts he preferred, but once he had immersed himself in the waters of fine art he was hooked by it once and for all. In the period running up to his departure to study in Prague, during his early secondary school years, first at the Novo Mesto grammar school and then at the secondary modern school in Idrija, and during the First World War, Jakac’s artistic world was characterised by tendencies towards reduced realism, mood impressionism and the interpretation of light effects, as well as by the beginning, establishment and blossoming of his pastel technique. His first more artistically progressive works are of course the watercolours, which were created in the summer and early autumn of 1916 while rambling through nature. He attained the first creative peak of his youth in 1919, after his final return from the army, in the new pastel technique. His most typical motifs reveal the Novo Mesto landscape, often with an entirely impressionist blur over its range of colour. In these pastels, nature is not experienced as a subject of painting, and important merely as a motif, but is rather experienced as a key to moods, since Jakac wished to achieve more than simply an impression, and in nature he sought and depicted its inner life.

A major turning point in the life of the young artist was of course his departure to study art in Prague. In Prague, a capital city with a rich artistic tradition and diversified cultural life, he soon began to familiarise himself with the latest post-impressionist painting, and especially with cubism, expressionism and abstract painting. All this left marks on his artistic development, in which we may identify the rapid formation of a new linear style in his drawing, the establishing of his graphic work and the continuation of his established pastel work, mainly in the landscapes of Dolenjska. He also very frequently took as his subject the Czech landscape, but this seemed to him in comparison with that of Dolenjska a landscape without the veiled atmosphere, with insufficient reverie and poetry to inspire the artist to any poetry of light and shades.

Božidar Jakac:
A Letter to Mother,
blue chalk, 1918

Božidar Jakac:
Old Prague,
black chalk, 1920

Božidar Jakac:
A Lonely Tree,
pastel, 1920