Maribor Art Gallery
Maribor's gallery of modern and contemporary art, in a 19th-century palace near the Drava.
The gallery opened on 8 February 1954 in the Godel-Lannoy palace on the corner of Strossmayerjeva and Oroznova, in the lower part of the old town near the Drava. The rooms were adapted for gallery use between 1951 and 1954 to plans by the architect Sasa Dev, who joined the earlier nineteenth-century palace to the former church of the Celestine convent behind it. The circuit of about eight hundred square metres ends in the Knights' Hall and the Pillar Hall.
The permanent collection runs to some 2,300 paintings and sculptures and follows Slovenian art from the nineteenth century onwards, with three Impressionist canvases by Rihard Jakopic, early work by France Mihelic and Zoran Music, and informel pieces by Rudolf Kotnik and Slavko Tihec. After the gallery absorbed the Rotovz exhibition salon in the 1980s it took on contemporary art as well, and it later built up what is held to be the first collection of video art in Slovenia.
Highlights
- Around 2,300 paintings and sculptures tracing Slovenian art since the 19th century
- Three Impressionist canvases by Rihard Jakopic
- Slovenia's first collection of video art
- Knights' Hall and Pillar Hall at the end of the exhibition circuit
