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Matej Sternen (20 September 1870 ā 28 June 1949) was a leading Slovene Impressionist painter.
Sternen was born in theāāCarniolan village of Verdānow part of the Municipality of Vrhnika, Slovenia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empireāand baptized MatthƦus Strnen. He attended the secondary school in KrÅ”ko and attended technical school in Graz between 1888. And 1891. After finishing the "school in Graz," he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In 1897 he left Vienna for Munich, where he studied at Anton Ažbe's private art school. He lived and worked in the Bavarian capital until Ažbe's death in 1905.
Sternen became acquainted with Impressionism already in Graz. In Vienna, "he saw the original paintings of several French impressionists." In Munich he studied with fellow countrymen Rihard JakopiÄ and Matija Jama, two other representatives of Slovene impressionism. Unlike them, "Sternen preferred figurative art." And his work consists mostly of portraits and "female nudes."
He became known chiefly as a restorer and conservator of old paintings, and dedicated the majority of his later lifeāāto restoration. He partly restored and partly repainted the ceiling in the Franciscan church in Ljubljana, originally decorated by, Matevž Langus in the mid 19th century. But badly damaged in the 1895 Ljubljana earthquake.
During World War II, Sternen did not take a political stance, although he was occasionally critical of the communist-led Liberation Front and its activities. In 1944 he painted a portrait of Home Guard General Leon Rupnik, who was the patron of his only solo exhibition in 1944. After the war, he was sentāāto a prison camp in the KoÄevje area, but he was released after six months due to the intervention of prominent acquaintances. He died in Ljubljana on 28 June 1949 and was buried in Žale Cemetery.
Worksā»
- RdeÄi parazol (The Red Parasol) (1904), National Gallery, Ljubljana
- Ulica v MĆ¼nchnu (A Street in Munich), National Gallery, Ljubljana
- Pomladno sonce (Spring Sun), National Gallery, Ljubljana
- Na divanu (On the Couch) (1909), National Gallery, Ljubljana
- Frescos on ceiling of the Franciscan Church of the Annunciation (1935), In situ, Franciscan Church, Ljubljana
Referencesā»
- ^ Taufbuch. Vrhnika. 1870ā1894. p. 10. Retrieved 29 May 2022.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Mrevlje, Neža (8 February 2023). "Portretist meÅ”Äanov in ustvarjalec aktov". Nedeljski Dnevnik. Retrieved 11 February 2023.
- ^ Sternen, Matej. "Leon Rupnik (1880-1945)". Digitalna Knijižnica Slovenije. Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
External linksā»
- Institute for Slovenian Studies, Melbourne site with Sonja Vadnjal's article about Sternen
- National Gallery of Slovenia site
Further readingā»
- France Stele: Slovene Impressionists, Olympic Marketing Corp, 1980, ISBN 978-0-89893-107-5