house at Punta in Piran; later, in the 1970s, as mass
tourism began to develop, he spent more and more
summers in the solitude and tranquillity of a cottage
at Škrbina in the Karst. He lived through the many
political, economic and social changes that occurred
in this small area, culturally so uniform but politically
divided. Generations of ancestors of rural and urban
origin, his contemporaries, fellow-citizens and fellow-
villagers (regardless of their nationality), their cultur-
al legacy and their work represented something
sacred to the artist, who had himself been the victim
of many harsh experiences, particularly in his youth.
Although the absence of the human figure is a con-
stant and a recognisable element of his work, espe-
cially from the 1950s onwards, the spirit of the Karst-
dweller, the stonecutter, the fisherman, the farmer
and other special figures is always present. The
objects and landscape he depicts, the origin of which
is recognisable and definable, although they are
depicted in Spacal's strongly stylised manner,
abstracted in the details, are unique carriers of the
artist's many-layered experience, understanding and
awareness of the local past andpresent and alsoof his
vision of the future. This asceticism, sometimes even
minimalism, in the selection of iconographicmodels -
symbols that for the most part are arranged planarly
across the surface of the painting - corresponds to a
recognisable chromatic element. The structure of the
composition is apparently modest but aesthetically
regulated by a semantically multi-layered linear pla-
narity with Spacal's chosen colour tonalities, with
original contrasts, sometimes bold and always
provocative, with correlations that are synergetically
cross-pollinated and concentrated in a final pure artis-
tic statement or thought. Subconsciously and unwit-
tinglyhe leads us into associations, reminiscences and
reflections, into special states that engage, as well as
the eye, the viewer's other senses too. The images
created since the late 1940s and early 1950s are not
merely a veristic and documentary representation of
known objects, landscapes and views, but, on the
contrary, extremely personal interpretations and at
the same time memorials to the people who shaped
and who continue to shape the civilisation of the
space that is depicted: the artist's Primorska. These
images are therefore universal artistic records of the
Karst and Istria, of their urban, architectonic and nat-
ural characteristics, the special states of their light,
warmth, tranquillity, peace, silence, original and
incomparable beauty.
Regardless of the medium used, each of Spacal's
works carries, along with its aesthetic values, a mys-
teriously perceived intimate story, and many of these
stories are depicted several times in different ways: in
several techniques and, consequently, in different
materials and formats. His precision in achieving a
previously imagined final effect is present in every
work, in every detail, and founded in a complex cre-
ative process. Clearly, however, the international
fame he earned, above all as amaster printmaker and
painter, did not satisfy him: his creative desires in
artistic expression and communication clearly went
beyond simply working inside a studio. It seems that
he deliberately chose artistic spheres and techniques
that in the restless twentieth century - despite thou-
sands of years of tradition - were sinking further and
further into oblivion, precisely because of their
demanding nature, the necessity of specific craft
skills, the use of specific materials and the amount of
time needed to create them.Mosaic - a technique that
requires very specific skills, including stonecutting
and building skills, and also patience during the
lengthyworking process, known in the oldest cultures
ofMesopotamia (as floor mosaic) and in certain peri-
ods very popular and common in European art - was
evidently perceived by Lojze Spacal as something dif-
ferent and challenging. In the second half of the
1950s, mosaicists working to his models (drawings
and colour woodcuts) and under his direct supervi-
sion realised two large-scalewall mosaics that still sur-
vive today: the composition Allegory of the
Countryside (made by the Alfio Tombossoworkshop
in Ljubljana) on the wall of the former Glavna
Zadružna Zveza building in Ljubljana, and a mosaic
on the theme of the Piranwalls (associations are also
possible with motifs of Karst houses and the
Byzantine cathedral - the artist's favourite and oft-
Mozaiki, tapiserije in likovna oprema ladij
❚
Mosaici, arazzi e opere decorative per l’arredo navale
17
