BOGDAN BORČIĆ - GRAFIKE/ PRINTS
retrospektivna razstava/ retrospective
katalog/ catalogue

Milena Zlatar

Introduction

In June 1999, a large retrospective exhibition of graphic works by the academy-trained painter Bogdan Borčić will open in the Art Gallery Slovenj Gradec. The exhibition coincides with the 23rd International Biennial of Graphic Art in Ljubljana. We believe that it is appropriate to present one of the leading Slovene graphic artists at the time of the most prestigious and world-renowned fine art exhibitions with the longest tradition in Slovenia. Even the Art Gallery Slovenj Gradec is not without tradition in organising graphic art exhibitions. Although these exhibitions have not been taking place uninterruptedly, they have greatly contributed to the rich gallery programme over the last forty years, and have ensured insight into developments in fine art all over the world. Allow me mention only the largest and most reverberant exhibitions, such as Woodcut in Slovenia 1540-1970, organised in 1970; or the international art exhibitions in 1966, 1975, and 1985, which included graphic works and also presented the opportunity to enlarge our permanent collection of graphic works with prints from famous artists, such as Johnny Friedlaender and Victor Vasarely. Academic painter Bogdan Borčić participated in nearly all of these exhibitions, and at the Woodcut in Slovenia 1540-1970 exhibition he exhibited five woodcuts created in 1957-58.
I first met the Bogdan Borčić at the end of the seventies in the Art Gallery Slovenj Gradec. We met in the office of the gallery director, Prof. Karel Pečko, who did not neglect to mention that Borčić had already exhibited in the Slovenj Gradec gallery, that he had been given awards, and that several of his graphic works are included in the gallery’s permanent collection. It was a great honour for me to be able to meet the internationally acclaimed artist. I had seen him just before in the town, on the main square, as I was on my way to see the gallery director to discuss my employment in the gallery. As an art history student at the Ljubljana Faculty of Arts I was extremely interested in and fascinated by his graphic works. The Slovene fine art scene in the seventies was marked by exceptional creations of the genre, which was influenced by the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana and its internationally acclaimed Biennial of Graphic Art.  In 1955, the initiators of direct encounters of domestic and foreign graphic art endeavours placed Ljubljana on the world map of important graphic art exhibitions. Apart from exhibitions of works by the pioneers of Slovene contemporary graphic art, e.g. Božidar Jakac, Riko Debenjak, Miha Maleš, France Mihelič, Marij Pregelj, Veno Pilon, and others, two Slovene artists working abroad also had an important influence: Lojze Spacal and Zoran Mušič. They introduced European influences to Slovenia; the latter also represented a direct contact with the Paris school. Nevertheless, the large numbers of quality graphic artists in Slovenia could only be a product of quality education at home, which was the task of the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts.  Among the first to establish their fame were Marjan Pogačnik and Karel Zelenko, and many others followed them. By around 1960 it is already possible to speak of the Ljubljana graphic school , and Bogdan Borčić was among its most prominent representatives. After 1950, young artists were given opportunities for study trips abroad, most often in Paris. Bogdan Borčić studied at Johnny Friedlaender’s celebrated school for graphic arts, where he perfected his knowledge of the techniques of etching and aquatint.
When Riko Debenjak left the graphic arts department of the Academy of Fine Arts, Bogdan Borčić became its professor and began to share his knowledge and experience with younger generations. He was renowned for his remarkable knowledge of graphic techniques, particularly relief printing and intaglio, and he was especially popular among students because of his direct approach and friendly manner. My friends, his enthusiastic students from the Academy, where he taught graphic techniques from 1973 to 1984, spoke about him at our frequent meetings in ateliers and at exhibitions. Much less talkative was my colleague, Barbara Borčić, the artist’s daughter, who studied art history and before her colleagues did not boast about her renowned artistic family. Only much later did I realise how substantial the link between them was, when his daughter wrote numerous important specialist texts about her father. Right now, during the artist’s retrospective exhibition in Slovenj Gradec, a monograph about the life and work of Bogdan Borčić is being prepared; it is the joint project of father and daughter, even in its written portion.
It may be a coincidence that twenty years after my 1978 meeting with Bogdan Borčić in the Art Gallery Slovenj Gradec, it was I who began to plan the retrospective exhibition of his graphic works. We inventoried his entire graphic opus, documented his exhibitions and wrote his biography. It was at about the same time when both the artist and I came to Slovenj Gradec. I have always had a great respect for him; as a young curator I was always nervous when we spoke of graphic works and techniques. On the other hand, for me and my colleagues he was a teacher radiating cosmopolitanism and consistency, especially when it came to the issues of fine arts and graphics. I remember my first collaboration in the preparation of the graphic exhibition. As I drew a graphic print out of its portfolio, my hands were trembling for its creator – Božidar Jakac himself – was looking at me; then he said: ‘OK, well done.’ I was reminded of this event in the spring of this year when Prof. Borčić and myself visited Dr Zoran Kržišnik, the director of the International Biennial of Graphic Art. Borčić carried his graphic works to be exhibited at the 23rd Biennial - just as he had exhibited at every Biennial since 1959. A young colleague accepted the portfolio, and Borčić showed her how to hold and handle a graphic print. The gesture revealed more than just routine; it showed a dignified respect for the paper as the medium for imprinting the artist’s observations. He has always been behaving in this way, whenever it comes to graphic art; he does not view it merely as one of many fine art techniques, but rather as a lifestyle demanding discipline, technological and investigative ardour and engagement of the entire intellectual potential.
In the preparation for this retrospective exhibition of the artist’s graphic works spanning some forty years we were in doubt whether we should also include his paintings and objects – in addition to the three hundred selected graphics out of more than seven hundred – which form a part of his ample opus. We decided for a few, key ‘interventions’. The placement is ‘twofold’. In the seven rooms of the old part of the gallery his works created before the end of the seventies are presented, including the cycles Komiža Doors, Chronicles, Fishing Signs, Sea Shells, Reflections on a Shell, and Coasts. Realistic depictions of characteristic seashore motifs and objects in these works are transformed into symbols and signs, and even these are increasingly more reduced, limited to a narrow selection of the most significant imaginary. The two decades of his graphic creativity are presented in the new part of the gallery. The hall itself is a characteristic product of the architecture of the end of the seventies, while certain interventions (boards with awkward round edges) have deprived it of the spirit of a contemporary exhibitory ‘hangar’. This is where we have placed Borčić’s ‘purest’ graphic works, which no longer feature the artist’s characteristic seashore and fishing motifs. Rather, the viewer has to concentrate on different surfaces and how they are joined, and especially on the subtle relationships of colours, determined by the rules of graphic techniques such as etching, aquatint, and mezzotint, and their combinations. Minimalism, a characteristic of Borčić’s painting, is also evident in his graphic works. If in the first two decades of his creativity we were witness to the reduction of the colour scale and the transfer of black-and-white graphic characters to painting, in the past decade we notice that the surface treatment used in painting has moved to graphics. That is to say, the black paintings have their origins in the graphic vocabulary, and then vice versa: the ‘pollution’ of colours, the softness of geste and lines with brushes and pencils have been passed on to graphics. The climax of these transitions are objects employing actual space, which represents, in a way, the reinstitution of the wholesome work of art. When the eye encompasses all individual prints as a whole, passing from one print to another, the viewing evokes a specific sensation of the space, which is reminiscent of the effect of ‘installation’. This only confirms the universality of the language and practice of fine art, achievable by great artists without perforce adaptations to temporary trends and innovations at any price.
I must point out that when Bogdan Borčić moved to Slovenj Gradec at the end of the seventies, the fine art activity in this town acquired new dimensions. The fine arts audience, formed at the exhibitions in Art Gallery Slovenj Gradec, witnessed new incentives and became more open to a pure aesthetics of fine art. It is not always easy as an artist to live with the town and its inhabitants, practically all of whom know each other, and to remain cosmopolitan at the same time. Karel Pečko, the founder of the Art Gallery Slovenj Gradec, was the first to experience this. One can isolate oneself, be exalted in one’s atelier, or modulate the pulse of the ambience to one’s own benefit. Three artists of roughly the same generation - each with quite a unique personality, life story, and entirely individual artistic credo - who have lived and socialised in Slovenj Gradec over the past two decades, have created a singular combination. They are Karel Pečko, Bogdan Borčić, and Jože Tisnikar (1928-1998). The first one is a poet, an eternal dreamer of the Koroška landscape; the second one is a rationalist; and the third one was a mystic, framed by the local melancholic character suggestive of expressionism. All three, however, attracted young artists and functioned as their mentors and friends. Borčić in particular has always been open to young artists: he retained the altruism of a true teacher, regarding both purely professional problems and in mediating the experiences of a senior colleague and in his evaluations of his disciples’ work. He has been open with praise and/or criticism to everyone requesting his judgement, and he has never pretended or equivocated. He also expects openness from his colleagues and all others who enter his world and in particular his atelier, which recently became his obsession and the Pandora’s box for the truth of life: he made a series of paintings and graphic works entitled From My Atelier.