JADRAN LENARČIČ
ONGOING EXHIBITION “BLUE VENUSES” (Oct-Dec, 2025)
Accompanying text (SLO/ITA) PDF
Exhibited paintings One Sunny Day
Enter the gallery Photos
BLUE VENUSES – SUMMARY: Jadran Lenarčič, renowned scientist and longtime director of the Jožef Stefan Institute, has long presented himself to the public as a visual artist, possessing a refined sense of light, space, and figurative narrative. Although he has long lived in Ljubljana, he maintains a strong connection to the city of his childhood, Koper, to which he returns with this new exhibition. Lenarčič has established himself as an independent artist, capable of boldly and lightly exploring the boundary between memory, myth, and contemporary urban experience. His work, initially characterised by metaphysical figures and mechanical constructions, is now entering a new phase with the Blue Venuses series: monumental female figures that dominate the painted surface with a slightly surreal presence and a profound colour palette, evoking Mediterranean light. An artist deeply connected to the spirit of the Mediterranean, Lenarčič maintains a connection to the cultural heritage of those places where art, light, and life are intimately intertwined. His often playful images reveal a carefully considered composition and a sensitivity to formal balance. With recurring motifs such as birds, balloons, chairs, umbrellas, and, in his most recent works, enigmatic Venuses in Blue, the artist constructs a universe that is both personal and universal, open to poetic interpretation and sensorial perception. Judita Krivec Dragan
SOLO EXHIBITIONS IN 2024
⇨ Exhibition “KRKA GALLERY”, Novo mesto, Oct/Nov 2024
… text by Tatjana Pregl Kobe (in Slovenian) PDF – Photos
⇨ Exhibition “SMALL GALLERY Cankarjev dom”, Ljubljana, July 2024
… text by Judita Krivec Dragan (in English and Slovenian) PDF
⇨ Exhibition “JSI GALLERY”, Ljubljana, June 2024
… text by Tatjana Pregl Kobe (in Slovenian) PDF
“Jadran Lenarčič has been personally and artistically committed to the intersection of the Slovenian and Romanic worlds. Created from an imaginative perspective, his paintings joyfully play with colours and symbols. The arabesque painting structure is unusual, but so skilfully composed that the viewer navigates the rhythm of the undulating images as safely as in a boat on a calm river,” Tatjana Pregl Kobe
Jadran Lenarčič is a robotics scientist by profession. He is also known to the public as the long-time director (2005-2020) of the largest research institute in Slovenia, the Jožef Stefan Institute. However, artistic creation is also an inner impulse of his everyday life. Lenarčič, born in 1955, spent his youth by the sea, and memories of the Mediterranean town of Koper resurrect his inspiration. He is a member of the Slovenian Association of Fine Arts and has had solo art exhibitions in Slovenia and Austria. Most of his creations are acrylic on canvas, occasionally acrylic on paper. He lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
“Creations of Jadran Lenarčič contain a cubistic understanding of perspective and fantastic metaphysical visions that represent a delicate reflection of the truths and dilemmas of existence, which he solves without scruples, in the same way as the geniuses of the Renaissance, convinced that answers can only be found in a complete, holistic understanding of the world,” Judita Krivec Dragan
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