Jeraj's Artistic Power, public guided tour of the exhibition by Zmago Jeraj

Guided tour of the exhibition conducted by Meta Gabršek Prosenc, art historian and art critic.

With his work and his personal charisma, Zmago Jeraj awoke completely new artistic and intellectual energies in Maribor. So it makes sense that when the painter's works are deliberately placed in a scenic space with alternating light and dark, we should first get to know the relationship between Jeraj and Maribor a little better. The exhibition presents works about which I wrote in 1978: "The strong tradition of colour realism, which was still firmly rooted in Slovenian visual art ten years ago, had to be broken by Zmago Jeraj’s generation of painters." The ever more intensive examination of the meaningful patterns of human alienation and the devastation of his habitat, the equal dialogue between painting, printmaking and photography, and the discovery of the hitherto little-noticed connection between Jeraj's pictorial narrative and the verbal, but also painterly and above all graphic legacy of Bruno Schulz, the tragically deceased Polish Jew, are the facts that the exhibition presents to us in all its eloquence.

Meta Gabršek Prosenc is an art historian, art critic and curator as well as the long-standing director of Maribor Art Gallery (UGM). She has written numerous reviews and texts in catalogues, professional literature and monographs, and has also been involved in several nationwide scientific research projects. In recognition of her life's work, she was bestowed with the Valvasor Award in 2008 and the Slovenian Art Critics Association (SDLK) Award in 2023.

Untitled, 1971, screenprint