Janez Lenassi
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Icarus, the monument to Edvard Rusjan by Janez Lenassi, 1960. ©Photo: Blaž Kosovel
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Alongside Icarus, the monument to fallen fighters in Ilirska Bistrica (1965) is undoubtedly Lenassi’s most important monument. ©Photo: Blaž Kosovel
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Monument to the Fallen Fighters in Ilirska Bistrica (1965), by Janez Lenassi ©Photo: Blaž Kosovel
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Monument to the Fallen Fighters in Ilirska Bistrica (1965), by Janez Lenassi ©Photo: Blaž Kosovel
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Monument to the Fallen Fighters in Ilirska Bistrica (1965), by Janez Lenassi ©Photo: Blaž Kosovel
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©Photo: Blaž Kosovel
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The artist Janez Lenassi is considered one of the most important Slovenian sculptors of the 20th and 21st centuries. After completing a vocational school in Klagenfurt, he served his military duty between 1945 and 1947. He then enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts (ALU) in Ljubljana, where he studied sculpture under professors Boris Kalin, Frančišek Smerdu, Zdenko Kalin, Karel Putrih, and Peter Loboda.
His works are characterised by a duality: on one hand, stylised geometric forms and straight, regular lines; on the other, soft, rounded and undulating shapes that integrate the sculpture with its surroundings. He often used simple archetypal signs—horizontals and verticals, spirals, triangles, rhombuses, crosses, and others. Among his most notable works are the monument to Edvard Rusjan in Nova Gorica (1960), the monument to railway workers on Mount Vogar (1962), the monument to fallen fighters in Ilirska Bistrica (1965), and the monument to seamen in Portorož (1977).
In 1959, he participated in the first sculpture symposium, held in St. Margarethen in Austria. This proved crucial for his further artistic development, as it was there that he discovered stone as a medium and sculpture in space, along with the social functions that sculptural work can express. Two years later, together with the sculptor Jakob Savinšek, he initiated the idea of sculpture symposia in Slovenia, which led to the establishment of the international sculpture symposia known as Forma viva.
Avtor: Nika Vaupotič
Vir:
Excerpt from the article:
https://www.novagoricaart.si/osebnost/janez-lenassi/