As part of the Ljubljana City Theatre's visit to the Prague Comedy Theatre with the play The Temptation in the Valley of St. Florian, the Slovenian Theatre Museum prepared a special exhibition of stage designs by Avgust Černigoj, which was staged in the aforementioned theatre. The exhibition was opened by the Slovenian Ambassador to Prague, Dr. Janez Prelovšek.
He was born on August 24, 1898, at St. Anne's in Trieste. After graduating from high school, where he studied decorative painting, he was drafted into military service. His first works are known from his early years of military service, which already show a masterful drawing style. While teaching drawing at the bourgeois school in Postojna, he also worked with painting, sculpture and graphics, especially etching. In 1922, he passed an exam at the Bologna Academy, which allowed him to teach drawing and art history at secondary schools. In 1922, his path took him to Munich, where he studied painting at the academy there with professors K. Becker-Gundhal and J. Hillerbrand. In the spring of 1923, due to his interest in more modern, bolder styles in painting and the visual arts, he went to the Bauhaus, which was then synonymous with avant-garde and socialism. Due to his revolutionary attitude towards art and the opening up of expressive possibilities in other artistic fields, he embraced constructivism. He was a student of Wassily Kandinsky and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. After returning from the Bauhaus, he was a professor at the Technical High School in Ljubljana from 1923 to 1925. During the Ljubljana Fair (15-25 August 1924), he held his first constructivist exhibition, which was set up in the gymnasium of the Technical High School. From 5 to 19 July 1925, he held a second exhibition, which included impressionist, expressionist and cubist works. Both exhibitions were not well received by art critics. The non-acceptance and misunderstanding of his work, as well as some other circumstances, forced him to find a new working environment in Trieste.
Černigo's constructivist work ended in 1929 with the publication of his and group works in the German “Der Sturm”. He continued his artistic path in a more traditional artistic form, without eliminating polemical features. In 1930 he exhibited at the Triennial of Decorative Arts in Monza, and in 1932 at the Venice Biennale. From the time during World War II we know his paintings of churches (Štivan pri Devinu, Grahovo in Baška grapa, Drežnica, Knežak, Bač, Košana…). After World War II he devoted himself to teaching and at the same time continued to create. His works range from figurative experiences to abstract-formal and cubist creations. Upon his return to Trieste, Černigo's life was one of constant, uninterrupted testing and introducing new challenges. As a dedicated art teacher in Trieste, he helped educate several generations of Slovenian students, including several figurative artists. In the summer of 1950, members of a group of Slovenian painters from Trieste presented themselves at the Modern Gallery in Ljubljana. The exhibition had a very large impact, as it only confirmed the position of Trieste as the second most important center of Slovenian painting. The year 1956 was a turning point for Černigoj. It was then that he crossed the line between a cubic stylized motif and a purely abstract form. He showed all this at an exhibition in the Jakopič Pavilion, which attracted great attention.
It was not until the 1970s that the wider cultural circle began to appreciate the importance and quality of Černigoj's work. He had high-profile exhibitions and received important awards. In 1976, he also received the Prešeren Award for lifetime achievement in the field of art. In 1981, he became a corresponding member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
He spent the last five years of his life in Lipica. There (according to the plans of Matjaž Garzarolli) the Černigoj Gallery was opened in 1986. Since 1987, the collection has been arranged in the form envisioned by the New Collectivism group. Avgust Černigoj died on 17 November 1985 in Sežana, where he is also buried. SOURCES: – Krečič, Peter: Avgust Černigoj, Trieste Press Publishing House, Trieste, 1980 – Slovenian Great Lexicon, Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana, 2003, p. 355
Davor Kernel, M.A., Curator of the Gorizia Museum
