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If Today we were to put a Slovene crew into a space capsule to take
the top-class products of cultural, artistic and intellectual creation
to distant planets, there would at least be no doubt about who should
be the pilot ... Read an interesting short essay on Slovenian
culture.
In modern times, the earliest signs of the Slovenian spirit have
surfaced in the field of culture. Ever since the poetry of France Prešeren,
culture has formed the heart of our national being.
Urban culture has developed in Slovenia over the last two
centuries, which has also seen the gradual evolution of fundamental
institutions such as the National Museum, and
the Slovenian
Philharmonic.
Nowadays, Slovenia has a myriad of theatres, cinemas, libraries and
educational facilities and is well known abroad by its current
cultural export.
The band Laibach is
absolutely pivotal in the field of music. Their early
industrial sound from the 1980s still has a cult following around the
world. Young composer Mitja Vrhovnik Smrekar is establishing himself
as a very reputable composer of theatre music.
Slovene literature and poetry is mostly very traditional,
but international translations of the literary works of Drago
Jančar, Lojze Kovačič, Tomaž Šalamun and Aleš
Debeljak prove that even the smallest cultures can create work of
high quality and also contribute to the most current global literary
tendencies.
The history of our country's visual arts is rich with
important artists. The painters of the group Irwin have gained
an international reputation. Their work is presented in all relevant
overviews of worldwide contemporary art.
Architecture has a special place in Slovenia's cultural heritage,
and the most famous Slovene architect is Jože Plečnik
(1872-1957), a pioneer of Slovene and European modern
architecture. Numerous exhibitions abroad have attracted considerable
interest in Plečnik.
The Slovenian architect and sculptor Marjetica Potrč has succeeded in
making a break-through into international artistic circles. As a
winner of the significant Hugo Boss Prize 2000, she had a solo
exhibition in the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2001. She is very
active on the international scene (in 2003 she exhibited in Valencia,
Salzburg, Bern). In 2003 she received the Jakopič award, the highest
national award in fine arts.
The emerging field of digital media arts has its own
eco-system, and the development of this particular field of art on a
global scale was partly enabled through the work of Marko
Peljhan and Vuk Ćosić.
Dance theatre has a disproportionately active centre in
Ljubljana and its most notable representative in Slovenia is Iztok
Kovač, whose performances are constantly admired at international
festivals.
Video art has been around in our country for thirty years;
its most notable practitioners in the last two decades are Marina
Gržinić & Aina Šmid.
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