SLOVENIA'S TREASURES

Jože Plečnik (1872-1957) was a special figure in the history of architecture.
His work can be devided in three stages: early work in Vienna, his work in Prague and finally in his native town Ljubljana.

Although a pupil of Otto Wagner in Vienna his work did not follow the paths of mainstream architectural development but he rather deeply believed in eternal architecture (Architectura Perennis).


The biography of Jože Plečnik

Jože Plečnik was born in Ljubljana in 1872. He decided to study architecture only after he had been rejected by the School of Arts and Crafts at the Austrian Museum of Arts and Industry. Although he lacked any proper education, he was accepted by O. Wagner in the latter master's class at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts on the basis of his extraordinary talent as a draughtsman.

He graduated in the spring of l898 with a diploma project that won him the so-called "Rome prize". From November 1898 to June 1899 he travelled through Italy and France. After his return he set up his own practice. He accepted a professorship at the Prague School of Arts and Crafts in 1911. For the next ten years Plečnik was focused almost entirely on his school activities and made no projects. Due to the increasing German nationalistic pressure Plečnik was prevented from succeeding O. Wagner at the Vienna Academy of Arts in 1912 and 1913.

In 1921 Plečnik moved to Ljubljana where he had accepted a professorship the year before at the newly established Technical High School. He organised the teaching of architecture in the form of a "master school", such as he himself attended with O. Wagner and also later in Prague.

During school vacations in 1934 he returned to Prague to arrange the castle's courtyards, gardens, and interiors, and the park of the president's summer residence at Lany.

In the first years after his return to his native country, Plečnik was engaged only in projects for Prague; from the mid-1920s on he received commissions for monumental works from the Ljubljana municipal government (the new town-hall with the market-place, the Žale mortuary). During World War II Plečnik was preparing plans for the future Ljubljana. In the changed post-war circumstances the new political authorities did not give him much support. The Prešeren Prize, awarded to Plečnik in 1949, was also a kind of political rehabilitation which brought him numerous commissions for monuments to war victims. He dedicated the last ten years of his life mostly to sacred art, but due to the high costs of these projects and lack of understanding on the side of political authorities, he could not materialise his monumental schemes.

He died in his house at Trnovo in Ljubljana in 1957.

Damjan Prelovšek