After several decades, the City of Prague will once again host a large-scale exhibition on Slovenian Impressionism and other styles that defined Slovenian cultural space between 1870 and 1930. In the crucial years at the beginning of the 20th century, the leaders of the Modernist style – painters Rihard Jakopič, Matej Sternen, Matija Jama and Ivan Grohar, and photographer Avgust Berthold developed a local expression that merged Secessionist and Symbolist elements with European Impressionisms. With the new style, uniting the middle-class present with the rural past, the artists created one of the tools for national awakening and at the same time tried to express the deepest longings of the human soul, as Jakopič poetically claimed. The human condition also inspired satirist Hinko Smrekar, whose sharp and penetrating jottings commented on the cultural and political developments in the Slovenian lands.
