sketch. Some of the weavers have explained how, in
collaboration with the artist and under his constant
careful supervision, they selected suitable types of
wool, often colouring thembyhand, and for days and
months wove them on looms. These uniqueworks of
art, unrepeatable both in their detail and as a whole,
are undoubtedly the result of a synergetic cross-polli-
nation of skills, knowledge and creativity, and of
course the indisputable conceptual/creative role of
the artist himself. The experienced weavers from
workshops in the Veneto region and Dekorativna in
Ljubljana, the long-time collaborators from Atelje 61
inNovi Sad, and the Trieste-born artist Magda Starec
Tavčar,whoworkedwithSpacal for some years in the
1980s, were, as the exhibited tapestries and their
models and sketches clearly show, well able to com-
plywith the artist's strict requirements, which permit-
ted no accidents or deviations from the carefully con-
ceived composition. The basic textures of the surface
of the textiles and their individual fragments - because
of the specific material, where the thread takes the
role of the line, and the method of elaboration, the
woven surface, plays the role of the colour plane - are
relief-like and thus as well as having a decorative
effect are attractive to the touch.
Spacal's recognisable formal/morphological artistic
language is minimalised in the choice of artistic
resources with the result that narrative is subordinat-
ed to the refined sensitivity of maximally subjective
expression. All of this is present in the exhibited
mosaics and tapestries and, in comparison with the
prints, drawings, paintings, wooden sculptures, is fur-
ther ennobled by the unconventional materials of
stone and glass in themosaics andwool in the tapes-
tries. Theworks in the exhibition arewithout a doubt
proof of the artist's extremely respectful attitude
towards the nobility of these two genres of tradition-
al wall art, which Spacal unceasingly conserved as
important media of artistic expression and communi-
cation. A master printmaker and painter, internation-
ally recognised and celebrated, Spacal was clearly not
satisfied by the interpretative possibilities of print-
making, drawing and painting, although he experi-
enced creation in the silence and solitude of his stu-
dio as a special, hallowed ritual. As an inquisitive
explorer and tireless searcher, he was stimulated by
the magical discovery of other techniques - less com-
mon but ancient and tried and tested.
Lojze Spacal, born in the city and a city-dweller, but
always very closely connected to his origins and the
countryside, a sensitive artist who experienced at first
hand the turbulent history of Trieste and Primorska,
conserved throughout his very long creative career
those simplest and most elementary humanist princi-
ples that are conditioned by the role of the human
being and his position in nature, in a specific place
and time. Despite the latent warmth and the contem-
plative atmosphere that flows like a special fluid from
his images, the desire for an intimately committed dia-
logue is always present with equal force. The spiritu-
ality of the artist's personal inner experience culmi-
nates in a reduced symbolic portrayal of the essence
of the experienced, the thought, the reminiscence, the
memory, the idea. And precisely this spirit of life, in
the broadest senseof theword, is present inhisworks
always and everywhere: in the magic views of the
town reflected in the surface of the sea, of boats in
the harbour or the suspended boats in Savudrija, of
the saltpans, the façades of the huddled houses of
Karst villages, noble stone architectural elements or
other typical ethnological objects illuminated by a
special lunar or solar warmth. Spacal's artistic canon,
thematically so ordinary, constantly surprises us with
its original and very simple archetypes, where there is
no trace of any sort of piousness, while at the same
time it surprises uswith its universal commitment and
its discreetly felt but incredibly effective expression
andmessage.
Mozaiki, tapiserije in likovna oprema ladij
❚
Mosaici, arazzi e opere decorative per l’arredo navale
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