(Ljubljana, 16.6.1933-Ljubljana, 12.5.2011)
Tone Lapajne was a Slovenian academic artist who repeatedly experimented with material and form. At first he worked as a sculptor, but then he became increasingly involved in painting. After completing his education at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1961, he enrolled in a specialist sculpture course with B. Kalin. Four years later, he was granted the status of a free artist. When making sculptures, he experimented with different materials. He created with concrete and iron, but also had a great affinity for woodworking. He was a great traveler. Already during his studies and later, he traveled to France, England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany, where he got to know leading art movements and exhibited.
In addition to smaller sculptures, he also produced 9 monumental sculptures that can be found on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. After finishing his studies, he joined the Be-54 group. It was designed by a generation of artists who enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in 1951. Its name symbolically indicates the place and time of the Venice Biennale exhibition, when for the first time our artists more freely came into contact with Western art. At that time, Yugoslavia began to move away from the Soviet Union, which allowed many artists a freer artistic language and a path towards abstraction, which was already well received in the West. He worked in the group only until 1966, after which he turned towards the Neoconstructivists. In addition to Lapajne, judges included D. Hrvatski, D. Čatež and D. Tršar.
They preferred to move away from modernism in style and lean towards American minimalist art. The center of his research represented how an individual art object works in space. He was also interested in the relationship between color and form. Tone Lapajne belongs to a group of artists called Informel. After the Second World War, they increasingly moved away from the outlined guidelines and focused on the spontaneous response of the artistic creator to a certain object. Even when painting, he did not take into account the basic laws and preferred to treat the art material within the framework of a sculptural approach. He worked with it more intensively after 1975, when he mixed bog soil with acrylic paints. He used as many as 50 different fingers, with which he achieved a completely different and uniquely recognizable artistic expression. He developed a new painting technique, which he crowned with 9 large canvases entitled Earth in the Sky. Already during his studies, he showed himself to be an extremely talented artist and was awarded the student Prešeren Prize for his work.
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Tone Lapajne je bil slovenski akademski umetnik, ki je večkrat eksperimentiral z materialom in obliko. Sprva je deloval kot kipar nato pa se je vse bolj ukvarjal s slikarstvom. Po končani izobrazbi na Akademiji za likovno umetnost, leta 1961, se je vpisal na specialistični tečaj kiparstva pri B. Kalinu. Štiri leta kasneje so mu podelili status svobodnega umetnika. Pri izdelovanju kipov se je preizkusil v različnih materialih. Ustvarjal je z betonom in železom, imel pa je tudi izjemno afiniteto do obdelave lesa. Bil je velik popotnik. Že v času študija in kasneje je odpotoval v Francijo, Anglijo, Belgijo, na Nizozemsko v Italijo in Nemčijo, kjer se je spoznaval z vodilnimi umetnostnimi toki in razstavljal.
Poleg manjše plastike je izdelal tudi 9 monumentalnih skulptur, ki jih najdemo na ozemlju bivše Jugoslavije. Po koncu študija se je pridružil skupini Be-54. Oblikovala jo je generacija umetnikov, ki se je leta 1951 vpisala na likovno Akademijo v Ljubljani. Njeno ime simbolno označuje kraj in čas razstave beneškega bienala, ko so naši umetniki prvič bolj svobodno stopili v stik z zahodno umetnostjo. Takrat se je Jugoslavija pričela odmikati stran od Sovjetske zveze, kar je številnim umetnikom omogočilo svobodnejši likovni jezik in pot proti abstrakciji, ki je bila na zahodu že dobro sprejeta. V skupini je deloval zgolj do leta 1966, nato pa se je usmeril proti Neokonstruktivistom. Mednje so poleg Lapajneta sodili D. Hrvatski, D. Čatež in D. Tršar.
Ti so se v slogu raje umaknili stran od modernizma in so se naslonili na Ameriško minimalistično umetnost. Središče njegovega raziskovanja je predstavljalo kako posamezen umetniški objekt deluje v prostoru. Zanimalo ga je tudi razmerje med barvo in obliko. Tone Lapajne sodi v skupino umetnikov, ki jih imenujemo Informel. Ti so se po 2. svetovni vojni vse bolj umikali stran od začrtanih smernic in se osredotočili na spontan odziv likovnega ustvarjalca do nekega objekta. Tudi pri slikanju ni upošteval osnovnih zakonitosti in je likovno snov raje obravnaval v okviru kiparskega pristopa. Z njim se je intenzivneje ukvarjal po letu 1975, ko je akrilnim barvam primešal barjansko zemljo. Uporabljal je kar 50 raznovrstnih prsti, s katerimi je dosegel popolnoma drugačen in lastno prepoznaven likovni izraz. Razvil je novo tehniko slikanja, ki jo je okronal z 9 velikimi platni z naslovom Zemlja v nebu. Že v času študija se je pokazal za izjemno nadarjenega umetnika in so mu za njegovo delo podelili študentsko Prešernovo nagrado.
Besedilo je za galerijo Porta Alpina pripravila Pia Župevec, dipl. um. zgod.
The text was prepared for the Porta Alpina gallery by Pia Župevec, B.Sc. art history
SOURCES/VIRI:
Tone Lapajne: Spomin Zemlje (Ljubljana, Muzeji in galerije mesta Ljubljane, Galerija Jakopič, ed. Marija Skočir), Ljubljana 2011.
Robert CAGLIČ, s.v. Informel, Pojmovnik slovenske umetnosti po letu 1945, Ljubljana 2009, pp. 101-104.
Živa JURANČIČ, s. v. Neokonstruktivisti, Pojmovnik slovenske umetnosti po letu 1945, Ljubljana 2009, pp. 189-194.
Jelena KOVAČEVIĆ, s. v. Minimalizem, Pojmovnik slovenske umetnosti po letu 1945, Ljubljana 2009, pp. 178-182.
Boštjan TEMNIKER, s. v. Be-54, Pojmovnik slovenske umetnosti po letu 1945, Ljubljana 2009, pp. 22-25.
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