Exhibitions

Tanja Špenko: Black Paintings

Academic painter Tanja Špenko has, despite her long-standing pedagogical work, continuously and devotedly dedicated herself to creating her personal oeuvre, both in painting and graphic arts. In recent years, her creative process has become even more intense. She successfully maintains her creative energy and exploratory zeal, both in terms of testing and upgrading her chosen artistic expressive means and the content of her messages. Her creative actions are marked by artistic freedom, representing a deeply personal creative oasis, unburdened by current artistic trends.

Through her visual language, the artist conveys a subtle perception of space and time, and above all, of life. With it, she touches upon questions of human existence, its coexistence with nature, and the life of nature itself. She presents themes that are both contemporary and timeless in an intimate manner, with a strong emphasis on introspection and artistic individuality. She distances these themes from reality and its tangible relations, transforming the recognizable into deeper symbolic and meaningful dimensions. Abstraction enables her to express herself in her unique way, fully dedicating herself to artistic means of expression—color, surface, and line—and to their roles and meanings, which she explores and elevates with her distinct approach.

The physical space of the pictorial field has always called her, with its whiteness, to acts of creation, to a strong and clear expression, which is always shrouded in metaphors, associations, and, above all, symbols belonging to her personal repertoire.

In her current cycle of artworks, change and strong symbolic gravity are introduced by the black foundation of the pictorial surface. Because of this, and despite subsequent coloristic developments, the artist refers to these works as “black paintings.” This designation is intentional and meaningful. She began creating these works after the passing of her mother, dedicating them to her. In these paintings, her iconography becomes even more intimate. They are a tribute to a deeply beloved person, a reflection of a period of mourning, a recollection of memories, and an expression of gratitude for all that was received.

The black in these paintings fully symbolizes the awareness of the finitude of existence in this world. On a symbolic level, the chosen foundation represents the unconscious, night, mother, shelter, and yin (the feminine principle in the universe and society). The subsequent coloristic development features Špenko’s characteristic limited palette, with intense, strong, and meaningful values. Red accents convey primal life energy, green evokes tranquility and belonging, as well as openness to the outside world, while blue, the most immaterial of colors, objectifies spirituality and wisdom. Gold embodies imaginary and mystical light, touching upon the divine and the inner self.

Not only in the choice of colors but also in the character of her brushstrokes, Špenko’s journey into depths and the realization of her distinctive artistic personality is evident. Her directly lived, confident, decisive, clear, and agile brushstrokes establish gently undulating forms, reminiscent of life’s fleeting moments in a monochromatic space. Within this space, she places precise geometric forms, concentrating eternal wisdom and messages within them. Together with the background, they create a strong counterpoint to the textures produced through printing techniques. These diverse textures encapsulate or establish the essence that bridges the conscious and unconscious, the rational and emotional, the material and spiritual. In this dialogue, the artist introduces white brushstrokes and white woodblock imprints, which, as she states, symbolize day, father, yang (the masculine principle in the universe and society), activity, light, freedom and its boundaries, as well as optimism.

The artistic purity, aesthetic refinement, and seismographic sensitivity of her works are embodied in individual minimalist lines, either traced across the pictorial surface or spiraling within the eternal and perfect form of a circle. The golden outlines of these linear traces further enhance their meaning, suggesting that the flow of life comes to a halt in those unique, golden moments.

The intimacy and simultaneously broad semantic scope of Tanja Špenko’s artistic solutions once again lead to dualities that create balance in everything. In the flow of her expressions, views, and emotions, every element has a profoundly significant role. She begins to realize this purpose through the choice of the painting’s base color and continues with the inner construction and composition, establishing the foundations of her reflections, which she clearly defines from the outset. The partitioning of the pictorial field is deliberate and precise, even more so—it is the first bearer of deeper meanings, realized through vertical or horizontal compositions and a pronounced tendency toward balance and symmetry. On the “sky” of Tanja’s pictorial field, interventions into the blackness, despite the diversity of artistic realizations, converge, seek connection, and evoke a sense of touch (“Imaginary Aspects – Restlessness – Intervening into Black Matter and Energy”). Here begins and continues the artist’s unique, fully realized, and meaningful artistic existence.

Anamarija Stibilj Šajn

 

About the author

Tanja Špenko was born in July 1956 in Ljubljana. In 1974, she graduated with honors from the VII Gymnasium Vič in Ljubljana. In 1979, she graduated from the Painting Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana under the mentorship of Prof. Štefan Planinc. She began exhibiting in 1979 with a three-artist exhibition at the Škuc Gallery and has since participated in numerous group exhibitions both in Slovenia and abroad. From her first solo exhibition in 1981 at the Jožef Stefan Institute Gallery in Ljubljana, she has held over sixty solo exhibitions domestically and internationally. Highlights include:

1984 at Bežigrad Gallery in Ljubljana,

1985 at the Collegium Artisticum Club in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina),

1991 at the ZDSLU Gallery,

1994 at the Rotovž Exhibition Salon in Maribor and the Likovni Salon in Celje,

1997 at the Equrna Gallery in Ljubljana,

1998 at the Zagreb City Museum (Croatia),

2001 at the City Gallery of Piran,

2005 at the Božidar Jakac Gallery (in the former monastery church) in Kostanjevica na Krki,

2008 at the A+A Gallery in Venice (Italy),

2011 at the Riko Debenjak Gallery in Kanal ob Soči,

2012 in the Glass Atrium of Ljubljana’s Town Hall,

2013 at the Small Gallery in Kranj,

2014 at the Gallery of the General Consulate of Slovenia in Klagenfurt,

2017 at SKC Korotan in Vienna and the Werkbund Gallery in Graz.

In 2015, she participated in the 13th Art Stays Festival of Contemporary Art, “Wunderkammer,” held at the Mihelič Gallery and the Minorite Monastery in Ptuj. In 2007, she created a cycle of screen prints for a graphic portfolio and a series of smaller prints for the bibliophile book Vmesnost (Intermediacy), featuring poems by Andrej Medved (printed by Slavko Pavlin, International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana). Her artworks are part of several Slovenian collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, the International Centre of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, the Maribor Art Gallery, the Coastal Galleries in Piran, the Božidar Jakac Gallery in Kostanjevica na Krki, and others. Her painting has been written about by several authors, including Andrej Medved, Jure Mikuž, Lev Menaše, Aleksander Bassin, Igor Zabel, Alenka Domjan, Tatjana Pregl Kobe, Anamarija Stibilj Šajn, Iztok Premrov, Marika Vicari, Nives Marvin, Barbara Sterle Vurnik, Sarival Sosič, Borko Tepina, Olga Butinar Čeh, Judita Krivec Dragan, Cene Avguštin, Miloš Bašin, Mitja Visočnik, and Tanja Špenko herself. She is a member of the Slovenian Association of Fine Arts Societies (ZDSLU) and works as a painter, printmaker, and illustrator. She also served as an art educator at the Secondary School for Preschool Education and Gymnasium in Ljubljana. She lives and works in Ljubljana.