Private collection, Ukraine art among 2024 highlights at National Gallery

The Kroples Art Collection is according to the gallery's director Barbara Jaki one of the finest private collections of Slovenian art.

It is a result of many years of systematic collecting and demonstrates the collector's passion, vision and awareness of the importance of one's own cultural heritage.

The collection as a whole is not known to the professional public yet, but Jaki said every work meets the criteria for the National Gallery's permanent national art collection.

Experts and the general public will now have a unique opportunity to see the private collection for the first time, as the show opens in early March.

Visitors will be able to see both leading 19th century landscape artists Marko Pernhart and Anton Karinger, works by Ivana Kobilca and Ferdo Vesel, Impressionists, and genre images by Maksim Gaspari and Hinko Smrekar. The post-WWII era will be represented by painters Marij Pregelj, Gabrijel Stupica, Gojmir Anton Kos and Zoran Mušič.

Interestingly, the Kroples collection also contains self-portraits of the artists.

Later in the year, the gallery will host a selection of works of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb, which is being renovated after a recent earthquake.

In October, a selection of works from the travelling European exhibition In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine will be put on show.

The exhibition focuses on the development of Art Nouveau and Modernism in Ukraine, which also strengthened Ukrainian ethnic identity.

It has already been hosted at museums and galleries in Madrid, Brussels, London, Vienna and Bratislava.

A smaller exhibition will be dedicated this year to Slovenian painter and graphic artist Marjan Pogačnik's print technique, to be accompanied by a documentary.

The exhibition comes after the gallery, to which Pogačnik (1920-2005) donated all of his works, honoured him with a retrospective in 2002 and selected prints in 2006.