Jože Ciuha

Biography

Ciuha’s list of awards begins in 1954, and the first of them, the Levstik Award, was given for illustration. He received it four times in all: in 1954, 1965, 1966 and 1967. In the decades that followed it was joined by prizes from Belgrade, Leipzig, Kraków, Seoul and many other cities.

Jože Ciuha was born on 26 April 1924 in Trbovlje, in Slovenia, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana under France Mihelič and Gojmir Anton Kos. He graduated in 1950, then continued on a special course in mural painting under Slavko Pengov and completed it in 1952. While still a student he spent some time in Macedonia, and this, as his biographers note, influenced his manner.

In the 1950s he lived in Paris and travelled in the Far East. From 1959 to 1961 he studied Buddhist culture and philosophy at the University of Rangoon (Myanmar). In the 1960s he travelled in North and South America. He described these journeys in three travel books: “The Petrified Smile” (1963), “Journey to the Tenth Country” (1966) and “Conversations with Silence” (1967). For the second of them he received the Levstik Award again, this time as a writer. A memoir, “Chronicle of Seven Oblivions” (2005), appeared later, and after his death, in 2016, “The Long Road”. He also wrote poetry.

He worked in many techniques: oil on canvas, Plexiglas, paper, watercolour, prints, illustration, a few tapestries and, later, mosaics. Critics find in his work an echo of Byzantine art: eastern scripts, rhythmic rows of figures, in places a gold ground. “Prophet 73” (1973) and “Prophet on a Golden Ground” (1979–1980) belong to this line. Among his other known works are “Migrant Women” (1958; Slovene title Pečalbarke) and “Celebration” (1974). He often showed human weaknesses through animals, frequently monkeys, and treated human figures grotesquely. As an illustrator, in the judgement of Slovene writers, he relied on line, sharp characterisation and humour. It seems to me that this combination of irony and ornament is his main distinction, though it is hard to judge from reproductions.

He also taught a great deal: from 1974 to 1978 he led a seminar in free painting at the International Summer Academy in Salzburg, in 1977–1978 he was an associate professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, and he lectured at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and at the International Graphic School in Venice. He was twice elected president of the Association of Slovene Artists.

He had more than eight hundred exhibitions, solo and group, in galleries and museums in many countries. His works are in the collections of the King of Morocco and the Emperor of Japan.

Among his awards are the Prešeren Foundation Award (1968), the Jakopič Award (1981), the grand prix of the Seoul graphic art biennial (1990), the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of France (1997), the Austrian Decoration of Honour for Science and Art, first class (1999), and honorary foreign membership of the Russian Academy of Arts (2004). In 2014 he became an honorary citizen of Ljubljana and received the Hinko Smrekar Award for his contribution to illustration.

Jože Ciuha died on 12 April 2015 in Ljubljana. The President of Slovenia, Borut Pahor, posthumously awarded him the Silver Order of Merit.