Alenka Bartl he has an extremely rich creative career behind him. Even before graduating from the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade, in the early 1950s, she designed the first drama, opera and ballet costumes for the Slovenian National Theater in Ljubljana - she was one of the first Slovenian professional costume designers with a university education in fine arts and costume design.
In the fifty-five years, she designed more than 500 theater costumes, participated in some forty film and television productions, and laid the foundations of the Slovenian Department of Costume Design - as a full-time professor, she marked generations of students at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television and the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana .
She significantly contributed to the establishment of costume design as an independent artistic genre in Slovenia and also in the former Yugoslavia; it was on her initiative that golden arenas were also introduced for costume design at the Festival of Yugoslav Feature Films in Pula.
Alenka Bartl's costume sketches (more than 5,000 of them are preserved in private collections and the SGM Iconoteka, according to currently known information) or their depictions - drama, opera, ballet and film and television costumes - reveal an intelligent, instinctive, often witty and joyful, and above all, always a curious and searching artist. In them, she was able to simultaneously follow the message of the author's proposal, the director's interpretation, the psychology or dramaturgical characterization of the characters, and also capture the character of the performer, the one who "wears" the costume. In her sketches (and costumes), she always skilfully and thoughtfully combined the (artistic) historical styles dictated by the proposal with the aesthetics of the time in which the theater, television or film creation was created.
Alenka Bartl participated with her creations in a number of important domestic and foreign festivals and exhibitions (besides the Prague Quadrennial, it is worth mentioning at least the high-profile international exhibitions in Tokyo and Shanghai) and received many awards and recognitions for them, including the Prešeren Foundation Award (1972) and the Prešeren Lifetime Achievement Award (1989).
The Slovenian Theater Museum marked its 60th anniversary with a comprehensive exhibition of the artist's oeuvre.
Project managers: Ivo Svetina; Francka Slivnik * Design and layout of the exhibition: Andrej Stražišar * Exhibition curator: Tea Rogelj * Selection of sketches: Alenka Bartl (with the help of Tea Rogelj) * Texts at the exhibition: Tea Rogelj, Ivo Svetina * Proofreader: Jana Lavtižar * Translation into English: Maja Visenjak Limon * Coordination: Marja Lorenčak Kiker * Conservation and restoration preparation of material: Tina Buh * Digitization and inventory of costume sketches: Dušan Nelec, Ana Perne and Tea Rogelj * Technical organization: Jože Raspet and the technical team of the National Gallery and Dušan Nelec, Slovenian Theater Museum * The documentary films Lady who undresses with dressing and Legends of the big and small screen: Alenka Bartl, the costume designer, were created according to the script and directed by Slavko Hren and produced by RTV Slovenia in 2011 and 2012. An integral part of the project was also a Tribute to the costume designer Alenka Bartl (screening of the film In the beginning there was sin, the film debut of costume designer Alenka Bartl, in the hall of the Slovenski kinoteke). The following participated in the preparation of the exhibition: Slovenska kinoteka, RTV Slovenia, Technical Museum of Slovenia, Theater Studio SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana and SNG Drama Ljubljana
