POETIC CONVERSATIONS IN ART

by PATRIZIA DUGHERO

“Dear friend, allow me to introduce you to my atelier […] And let me speak: a sheet, a screen, something to write…” This is how Miljana Cunta, in absolute simplicity, offers us, and only in closing, the conversations she had with Vladimir Makuc, one of the most important Slovenian figurative artists of the last century. The different age has not at all prevented the identification with the imaginative worlds of the painter, on the centenary of his birth, allowing the poet, not new to lyrical intra-generational dialogues, to lead readers into an identification of original landscapes, of childhood and youth, very close to each other. In the proximity “Conversations were born that are the document of a personal journey through space and time, as the artist’s works have directed it” and, adds Cunta, also “on the origins of creation”. In 2025 we wanted to pay a special tribute to Makuc with an exhibition that remained open to visitors outside the museum but above all with the bilingual volume that we offer in the column*.

Vladimir Makuc, who passed away in 2016, known for his lyrical-poetic way of expressing himself, was born in Solkan and studied at the Academy of Ljubljana, where he specialized in the conservation and restoration of medieval frescoes, initially focusing on graphics, woodcuts, etching and aquatint. In ’60 he went to Paris to study with Johnny Friedlaender and then devoted himself to painting, tapestry and sculpture. Included in the collections of numerous galleries and museums, he donated a fundamental part of his opus to the museum of Nova Gorica. He has received numerous awards, including the Prešeren Lifetime Achievement Award and the Župančič Award. Its theme is closely linked to the coastal area, the Mediterranean climate and the Karst, with motifs of animals, bulls, oxen and birds, but also with mythological themes. Themes that Miljana Cunta knows well and that she takes up and regenerates in this new sylloge of hers. Born in St. Peter-Vertoiba, she lives in Ljubljana, where she graduated in comparative and English literature, then obtained a master’s degree with a thesis on contemporary critical gazes around Victorian poetry. His field of work includes literary creation, translation, editorial work and organization in the cultural sector. She was the program manager of the Vilenica and Fabula festivals. He has translated into Slovenian, among others, the poems of Patrizia Cavalli, Christina Rossetti, Denise Levertov, Alda Merini, Lisel Mueller. He has published four collections of poetry, Za pol neba (Half of the sky), Pesmi dneva (Poems of a day), also a collection in poetic prose that puts childhood and old age in dialogue, Svetloba od zunaj (The light from outside) and Nekajkrat smo zašli, zdaj se vračamo (Sometimes we have lost our way, now we come back). His poems have been translated into eight languages. A multiple finalist, he has also received numerous awards, including the Mladika magazine prize, the Jenko prize and the Prešeren fund prize. A land that unites the two artists and that Miljana says she crossed as “spaces of a basement, to see if they are perhaps connected with the spaces of the basement of the neighboring house” visiting the places of Makuc, Solkan, Hrastovlje, Ljubljana, the salt pans and the Karst, even Paris, perceiving her childhood love for life and stubborn introspection, which are also talents of the author, so much so that: “In the evening, when silence shared the sensations of the day, I checked which of its images had been imprinted on me, recalling to consciousness my own memories, sensations, dreams – as an answer, as a new question.” Miljana seems to contemplate her own and others’ inner landscape with new eyes, as if it were René Daumal’s The Analogous Mountain, an apprenticeship (Hrastovlje) rather than a peak to climb (note how the mountains of the places mentioned around Gorizia seem to have blunt tips), an itinerary to overcome one’s limits, a non-Euclidean mountain that outside the schemes of logic and geometry is symbolic and necessary connection between earth and sky. And where the path is represented by a collection of significant expressions, sometimes motionless in silence, other mobile, occasional experiences of our lives and the panoramas come from the painter’s images as expanses along a mystagogical path. And then “Close your eyes and look for the image to hold on to as you fall. Some are too far away, some too weak for support. No poem helps, this battle has not yet been transcribed” An invocation of images for the 20 fragments, also refined plates, of a true poème en prose, in the gait of metaphors to overcome even this border, between word and figurative art, with a stylistic clarity full of grace.