Milena Zlatar

JOŽE TISNIKAR
Painter, born 1928 in Mislinja, lives and works in Slovenj Gradec.

Four artists have left a distinct mark on Slovenj Gradec: composer Hugo Wolf , poet Ernest Goll , sculptor Franc Berneker , and painter Jože Tisnikar. Of course we could list many other significant artists and tell of the creative potential of their lives. However, it was precisely these four who gave a special emotional pulse to Slovenj Gradec: loneliness and traumatism in the experience of existential insight. The life story of each one could begin with the words: "There was something about his character…" Fateful experiences and realisations led them to creation; they were split between the banality of the everyday and the sublime emanation of sounds, words and images. Their lives and works will never be entirely elucidated; rather they will remain the subjects of manifold studies frequently dealing with the fringes of commonplace life stories. This is especially true of Jože Tisnikar.
The tragedy of the composer and the poet are wrapped in the mysticism of the slow death of the composer, and the poet's decision to resolve his own physical existence. Franc Berneker, the first modern Slovene sculptor, also ended his life in oblivion and isolation. It seems as though Tisnikar has combined the fates of the three artists into one creative force, as though he defeated Hades and returned to this world. The transformation of their existential traumas into works of art figures in the ontological perception of the world that produces artists. Even today, in the era of modern visual communication and the modernist articulation of fine art inscription, narrative composes a significant component of formal and aesthetic norms. The personal views of a musicologist, literary historian, art historian, and sociologist (as well as experts from other domains), together with the critical contribution of every single branch of knowledge, help create an understanding of these works. Despite the time distance, this art remains consistent with the era in which the artist, the observer or even both, lived. Therefore, judgements and explanations, which are never definitive, depend on the time distance and social factors upon which the artist and the observer are hinged. It is this unambiguous quality that enables a piece of art to live through all social transmutations.
Practically every Slovene critic of note has written about Tisnikar, and hardly any other Slovene artist has been paid so much attention during his life. Nevertheless, Tisnikar has been isolated, as though he carried the burden of his singularity and stigma precisely because it was so difficult to place him into any category of style. The historical distance of the recent past has not yet refined the elements that shadow the painter with the excessive adoration of authenticity and originality, which in the Sixties was promoted by discoverers of the so-called ‘na?ve painters’. It was precisely because of the promotion of this phenomenon that Tisnikar was noticed so early, that he was given the opportunity to exhibit, while the notion of existentialism was overlooked. Social conditions in the late Sixties were also not open to abstract art, and expressionist style was considered to be outdated. In the first decade after World War II something of a crisis even developed on the Slovene fine art scene. The crisis was not due to the artists themselves, but rather to the incompetence of Slovene fine art criticism, which theoretically was expected to form and explain new developments in the field of art.
Four decades of Tisnikar’s personal and artistic growth, his  solitude and social recognition, correspond to the development and maturing of the Slovene fine art scene. This art scene was defined both by social factors of the post-war period and the development of Slovene art, which, despite the fact that traditionally and geographically it belonged to the heart of Western European civilisation, lagged behind modernist currents. Like any decade following great social upheaval (wars, revolutions), the Fifties were also enchanted years. However, society soon became tired of celebrating the victory, the pressure to acknowledge only the ideals of Socialist Realism subsided, and artists were able to establish discourse based upon the modern aesthetic experiences of European art. The by-product of this process was the divergence from and misunderstanding of this practice as a reflection of all contradictory social development. This also helps us to understand the rejection of expressive fine art rooted in the existentialist pattern of creativity.  The social milieu of the time was not ready to accept this kind of categorisation, and Slovene fine art criticism did not place Tisnikar within the expressive field of creativity until many years later. Slovene (post-)Expressionism smouldered too long in marginal intellectual and artistic circles, its growth later interrupted by World War II. The tragic experience of the war-time epic upon which the Slovene nation would feed was later replaced by the heroic glorification of the labour achievements of socialist society, the era of Socialist Realism. Nevertheless, some Slovene artists have preserved the poetics of their own individual fine art , and their creative concepts remained independent of both Socialist Realism and the approaching Modernism. These artists actually saved the image of Slovene fine art in the first decade after the war. They preserved a singular and committed relationship with the spiritual atmosphere of the time, especially in regard to Slovene geographical, cultural and historical peculiarities, which were comprised predominantly of specific views of figurativeness and the contextual interpretation of fine art. We can discern post-Expressionist tendencies, primarily in the domains of literature and fine art, in which Expressionism again reached a prominent level.  Foreign models were not so important, although they enabled access to other aesthetic practices of modern visual representation, which were slow to take root in our surroundings – not until the Seventies did this undergo significant change.
In such circumstances, the first few generations of graduates from the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts (established in 1948) found themselves in a troublesome situation. They endeavoured to get foreign scholarships, but only a few were granted the opportunity to come into contact with European art centres; study in Paris was especially tempting. As for all the rest, if they failed to respond to orders and the need for heroic monuments (sculptors were even worse off than painters in this regard) they were destined for pedagogical work.
Surprising as it might be, this also begins the story of the development of the advantageous cultural climate in Slovenj Gradec, where Jože Tisnikar embarked on his artistic path. His mentor Karel Pečko, academic painter and renowned gallery owner, started to organise fine art exhibitions , which attracted domestic and foreign artists to Slovenj Gradec. This enabled domestic artists to establish a connection to modern fine art creativity and to critically compare their own creations with the achievements of internationally renowned artists. Tisnikar did not have an academic education in fine art, he was only able to encounter it in reproductions and during his visits to the museum and churches rich with fine art in Slovenj Gradec and its surroundings, which were run by the parish priest Jakob Soklič . Thus he found the lively pulse of fine art in the city more than stimulating. He began to copy the works of older masters, but this did not fulfil his creative aims, for his inherent spiritual essence was something quite different. From the early beginning, it led his artistic skill in drawing and painting towards a peculiar style of form and, later, singular use of colour. Tisnikar developed a discernible and unique style of painting from the very onset, and it would have been impossible to erase it, even had he received formal education at a fine arts academy, or had he painted in the manner of numerous amateur painters – which would have been much more acceptable to a small-town scene.
 The tragic experience of life, which originated in the hospital prosection room and merged with the fertile soil of the specific environment in which he grew up, became the motivating force of his elemental fine art narration with hardly any comparison in the space of Slovene fine art. It was an asylum, into which he would retreat in moments of crisis, although not in search of a therapeutic effect, but rather of the subconscious metaphysical perception of passing, which became his own personal mythology. The prospering cultural atmosphere of Slovenj Gradec, together with the crucial fact that in 1951 he started to work in the prosection room as an apprentice in dissection, only helped Tisnikar enter the local fine arts scene. The comprehension of the transitory nature of humanity and his reflections on life led Tisnikar into the world of enchantment. Moments of catharsis followed; filled with cognisance and energy, he had to express himself. Thus he drew and painted. Forms were pouring out of him; at the start he merely drew, and only later did he begin using colour. Motifs from the environment that characterised him so strongly and changed his life, started spontaneously to predominate.
 In 1955, he created his first painting from the hospital surroundings, entitled The Autopsy. Dr. Stane Strnad , director of the hospital, saw Tisnikar’s paintings and noted their simplicity and Tisnikar’s incredible creative potential. He informed his friend, painter Karel Pečko, about the artist. With the latter as his mentor, Tisnikar became more self-aware, but nevertheless he had to live through long years of doubt, positive reviews and social recognition came only much later.  Today it is an undeniable fact that Tisnikar is one of the most unique Slovene painters, a charismatic personality, but still a solitary »traveller« comparable to no one else. He has neither idols nor imitators, since for many people the field of his creativity - death as an iconographic theme - is taboo, one which they can not and will not approach, at least not in the manner adopted by Tisnikar himself. Fine art critics have placed him in proximity to a category of expressive existentialist artists, known as »dark modernism«.  But each one of the Slovene painters relatively close to Tisnikar (Marij Pregelj, Gabrijel Stupica, France Mihelič, Zoran Mušič, and of the younger generation Zdenko Huzjan in particular ) is so singular, and Tisnikar so unique in his life experience, that comparison only proves their incomparability.
What makes the expressionist poetics with existentialist additions, and even the surrealistic and phantasmal poetics from the late nineties, so specifically Tisnikarian and incomparable with any other poetics? First of all, it does not deal with a crisis of values in certain social surroundings, it does not narrate grand stories and social analyses of living surroundings seen through critical optics. It is so commonplace that even the great philosophical existential themes of absurdity, anxiety, death, and nothingness, become a part of life.
 Tisnikar has preserved his suggestive fine art inscription to date, perpetually building a strong fine art image of his exceptional opus, which did not dissolve into emptiness. As to iconography, he dedicated himself to the themes connected with the cessation of life; even when depicting scenes of everyday human life, one can feel the specific perception of human transitoriness and loneliness. His paintings, however, do not invoke depression. The fate of Tisnikar’s personalities is tragic, but at the same time it brings hope. Like Prometheus, who taught people numerous skills and provoked the anger of the gods with his philanthrophy, Tisnikar’s ‘gods’ are also divinities, although tragic, that serve people and revive their faith and hope. They do not provoke anxiety, rather they attract and excite us, for they speak of life, inevitably composed of two opposing principles: life and death.
 People frequently have difficulties in comprehending the life cycle with death as one of its poles; they need a mediator who eases their passage in both the physical and spiritual sense. Precisely because of the unavoidable transition, and their fear of it, the world of human cognition is still opposed to scientific findings, even at the threshold of the 21st century. Sometimes we are not very far from medieval mystical explanations, mixed with pre-Christian ideas about life and death. Tisnikar himself is a mediator between the public and his works – he is the priest who initiates us to his own world.
Tisnikar’s works evoke questions about the meaning of life. These questions are also reflected in the verse of Ernst Goll, whose poem The Course of Life reveals individual experience and bitter subjective sentiments about life. It begins and ends with the words, »We know nothing of time and space, we journey in an endless circle«.
Tisnikar succeeded in persuasively translating his feelings of passing and catharsis into the language of art. However, the philosophical and psycho-sociological analyses are not sufficient to place him in the context of art history. Tisnikar, however, has proven to be an excellent painter. He mastered the skill of the métier, developed a feeling for composition and, with remarkable skill, grasped the illusion of space. The selection of works at the retrospective exhibition enables us to follow the logic of his artistic development and his solution of entirely formal problems. Paintings with accentuated plane surfaces and colour as merely an accidental companion to the drawing, characterise his early period. The drawing is the most spontaneous method of recording the artist’s thoughts, it is the language with which he expresses and embodies those thoughts.  In the beginning, he had not thoroughly mastered the technique of painting, but this fact only enhanced the expressive effect. Monotypes from the sixties are particularly exceptional expressions of his elemental messages. The seventies were a period of his growth in the direction of plastic spatial elaboration, and the study of colour exploration also gained new significance. It seems as though the distinctive Tisnikar green  developed spontaneously in connection with motifs from the prosection room. We see the satiation of colour pigments which, together with organic binders (egg tempera), enwrap a ‘heavy’ light that floods across the canvas, rises from an unknown spring, and makes the setting mysterious. It would be rather superficial to claim that this is theatrical light, the light that effectively constructs the fine art setting. Sometimes it appears as a mere ray of light – a flash of wit that carries us into the irrational world. This kind of light, together with the hues of layered colours, can create a surreal world, such as the one depicted by the great Belgian painter René Magritte, and similar to the symbolic essence of the ‘customs officer’ Henri Rousseau. Nevertheless, Tisnikar’s paintings retain the intense drama of inner suffering as a consequence of the tragedy of life. We could speak of the bipolarity of his paintings, of their earthly and spiritual sides. The earthly is portrayed in expressive forms, with linear and colour deformation, while the spiritual is represented by the light and symbolism of the depicted persons. Like the title of Paul Gauguin’s painting with its philosophical and religious motifs, the following questions come to mind, »Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?«
Thus we can discern common points with symbolism, which endeavoured to implant a perception of the world, in which inherent and suggested reality would become an authentic value. The message should be read through symbolism, for a symbol is beyond both actual and illusory presence. Such suggestiveness and mystery is manifested in Tisnikar’s works in entirely ordinary and seemingly clearly comprehensible scenes. In contrast to Edvard Munch, Tisnikar depicts psychic situations and demeanour. The impetus of Munch’s Expressionism was the general crisis of values and his reaction to it, while Tisnikar’s impetus is found in his personal bearing in the face of existential problems . However, he could only establish a secluded dialogue. It is therefore not a coincidence that Tisnikar mainly depicts himself, even when he is not aware of it. It is known that self-portraits  are the favoured means of introspective psychological exploration, that they reflect the artist’s view of life’s philosophies and actual experiences. All Tisnikar’s characters express existential strain, intensified through his personal tragic,  and for that reason he almost always depicts himself. Even the Christ figure (simultaneously suffering and victorious) is Tisnikar himself. He even dared to disfigure Christ, to cut off his hand, which is an apparent and intentional shift away from the known depictions of Christ. The depicted figures do not portray any differences between men and women, they do not even feature their age. Time is extended to infinity, and thus the definition of age is not necessary. Tisnikar’s figurativeness includes not only depictions of people, but also animals: bats, mice, rats, horses, crows, cats, crickets, and others – both as apparitions and real beings. The recognition of the transitoriness of every single thing, dead or alive, is always unmistakable, but it is expressed so subtly that it does not disturb us. Animism or soul, is the moving force of the world, it shows itself through the sublime and mysterious excursions of human life. His love scenes bear no erotic connotations. Tisnikar is not carnal. Everything he painted gained in the next moment some superior air, feasts in village pubs changed, just like the moments in the prosection room, or processions at funerals. Everything became equally calm, placid and dignified. The poor man drowning his sorrows in his drink and staring bluntly at us is not a banal scene, but an allegory of the recognition that there are other, different worlds. Thus there is hope for and faith in deliverance. Perhaps this is the answer to the mystery of why Tisnikar’s paintings attract us so irresistibly. They are so human, but at the same time so divine. To date, Tisnikar has succeeded in preserving his strong expressive charge, although his life has changed entirely. He reacts subtly to the developments around him. His motifs in the eighties and nineties have apparently become moderate and his memento mori hardly audible. Is that so!? Why can we not hear the artist cry: the string of refugees; the dead fields of the Transylvanian Count Dracula  (the painting made in 1998 - does it not prophetically predict the Balkan death dance?!); Gypsy villages, and people living on the fringe of civilisation; cats slaughtered by a nameless executioner; Adam and Eve in the middle of a wasteland; the herald of Savonarola’s penance  in a medieval town where people hide behind masks … carnivals. People dance and prance, like moths they spin around the doomed ballroom, and roast in the fires of their own vanity and apathy. Tisnikar has assumed the role of observer, this is no longer his own catharsis. Human apathy regarding the misfortunes of other people has unconsciously touched him. He paints fervently. Gone are the traces of colourful layering and spending hour after hour smoothing the surface. Now each stroke of his brush is discernible, the instrument glides easily across the surface. He stopped cutting into the substance, his figures are not released from him with pain. He has changed, he is now a prophet inscribing his visions. The thoroughness of his creations should be explored in steps. The hidden symbolism of objects and humans, and accentuated colours (the appearance of red after 1990!) appear slowly, through contemplative perusal of a painting. The setting is elevated to the level of the stage, or contrarily, lowered to the very bottom margin of the painting. Frequently, two-thirds of the pictorial field is left to the extraordinary ‘landscape’ or urban milieu. He has spontaneously seized the existential issues of contemporary man. Regardless of the traditional account of painting as a means of expression, he addresses the audience of fine art in many different ways. One of the most prominent is the apparent flirtation with the world of motifs that everybody can understand, but which also conveys deeper meanings. It is therefore not a coincidence that his motifs are divided into numerous sets, such as Mothers, Husbands and Wives, Crucifixes, Oblivion, Painter, People and Horses, One-eyed, Births, The Mourning, Journeys, Crows, etc.  Recently, he even added some new ones, such as Gypsies, Carnivals, Adam and Eve, Animals and the ubiquitous Self-portrait. We should not, however, overlook the specific landscape which has earned the artist’s special attention ever since the seventies. Imprecisely outlined and even less locally defined, it is nevertheless grand, for it will exist longer than man himself – it is the landscape after the cataclysm.