depicted motifs) made by Slavko Kranjec for Piran's
Venetian House. The choice of subject of these two
compositions, and also of the later (1981/82) wall
mosaic in the atrium of the Kulturni Dom in Gorizia
is evidence of Spacal's commitment to two thematic
categories: the rural idyll and the specific character of
the coastal town. The interpretations depicted in the
mosaics come to life in all their magnificence when
seen from a suitable point of view: thanks to their
size, thematerials used (awealth of different types of
stone and marble, with glass), the special and differ-
ent variety of colour created by the reciprocal action
of the stone cubes and the constantly changing
colours, depending on the light, and lastly the inviting
palpability of the characteristic relief surface. In later
decades too, further monumental wall mosaics were
createdunder the artist'swatchful eye: Archaeological
Vine (Arheološka trta / Vigna Archeologica) from
1969 (installed in the council chamber in Doberdob
in 2000), a composition from the hall of San Luigi
Primary School in Trieste, which unfortunately has
not survived, and the mosaic in the atrium of the
Kulturni Dom inGorizia. From the1960s onwards, in
collaboration with various mosaicists, but above all
with the international mosaic school in Spilimbergo
(Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli), he created mosaics of
different formats, again withmotifs familiar from sev-
eral interpretations already realised in other genres.
Models for each of them can be found among
Spacal's prints, and even among print matrixes and
paintings in various techniques, while some motifs
(e.g. Archaeological Vine, Idyll in the Countryside)
were also realised in another wall art technique: tap-
estry.
During preparations for the jubilee exhibitionof Lojze
Spacal's mosaics and tapestries, evenmore surprising
than the discovery of several hitherto unknown
mosaics was the number of newly discovered tapes-
tries. According to information currently available,
more than forty Spacal tapestries survive in the col-
lections of galleries, public institutions, companies
and private collectors, in Slovenia and abroad. As
well as the genuinely large formats that once adorned
the luxurious salons of famous ocean liners such as
the Raffaello and the Eugenio C., several smaller tap-
estries, which however are still magnificent and clear-
ly show the artist's identifiable style, have been dis-
covered.Owing to the use of a specificmaterial, most
oftenwool (silk thread inEastern countries), the tech-
nique of tapestry-making, known in the Oriental
world since antiquity and a popular form of decora-
tion in European castles and manors in the Middle
Ages, had and still has, alongwith its decorative-com-
municative role, a special functional value in the cre-
ation of a warm interior. The tapestries of Lojze
Spacal, distinctive in their severe graphic-linear struc-
ture, set in a planarly perceived space defined by the
artist's ascetic but expressively effective use of colour,
create a pleasant warm atmosphere regardless of
whether the tonalities chosen are warm or cool. The
iconographic form in the depictions of objects, archi-
tectural elements, fragments of urban environments
and landscapes - here and there joined by the stylised
silhouette of an animal - are duplicated and repeated
in the same image and in several compositions, but
always in different combinations and correlations and
with a new significance and expressiveness. Despite
the fact that the oldest tapestries date from the 1960s,
their intimate poetics and at the same time the uni-
versality of their expression mean that they are still
contemporarily fresh and magically mysterious. The
motifs of boats, saltpans, the coastal town - favourite
themes of the artist in the late 1950s and 1960s,
when he frequently worked in Piran - lived on in
Spacal's memory as very personal associative stories
even later, when he stopped going there, and still
acted as a frequent stimulus for his work. In the tap-
estries, most of which are woven from wool, they
come to life again with incredible archetypal power
and energy.
Objectified in the textiles are Spacal's silent, placid
and imperishable gifts tohis admired forebears, and at
the same time his intimate homage to the original
beauty of nature. The depictions tied to theKarst also
reflect his specially respectful attitude towards every
detail of conserved heritage and the elementary
typologies of this landscape. The precision of the
technological execution of the segment and the image
as awhole, the considered compositional structure of
lines and planes, and the careful choice of colours
are, once again, the values that, irrespective of the
choice of artistic genre, define his entire oeuvre.
Some of the surviving life-sizemodels done in various
techniques (on canvas, on wooden panels) demon-
strate the artist's consistency in the precise elabora-
tion of the fragment and the structure of the compo-
sition as a whole. The technique of tapestry - besides
basic mastery of the skill of weaving - undoubtedly
also requires patience, manual skills, and consistency
in the final realisation of the previously prepared
18
Lojze Spacal
