The exhibition celebrates the creativity of one of the most important painters and printmakers in Slovenia. Borčić was one of the few representatives of abstract and minimalist art who was active from mid-1980s and until his death. On display are 35 paintings, nine drawings, nine objects, some drawing and painting tools and accessories, an easel and a chair from his atelier, which was a common motif and inspiration for the artist. There are also a few of his portraits and snapshots from his atelier that were taken by Miloš Bašin, Oskar-Karel Dolenc, Tihomir Pinter and other, unknown photographers.

Glancing Around the Atelier
A memorial exhibition honouring one of the key Slovenian painters and printmakers, and a representative of abstract art. On display are paintings from the period 1949–2014 when his art largely became abstract. In his late works he created pieces that blended painting with industrially produced circuits and computer parts.
His artwork leads us towards a clearly discernible essence of fine and visual art, but also his own perception of its rules and their materialisation.
Borčić built his art pieces around objects from his personal life and the visual properties of sea snails and seashells, which often manifested in his art.
Borčić painted depictions of seashells in the 1960s. However, in the period 1970–2014 seashells turned into the only motif of his artistic exploration. He meticulously featured seashells and objects he had collected throughout his life in his artwork, slowly transforming the seashell and the sea snail into a dot. On display is a smaller untitled painting from 2014, that was intended to become a part of a larger painting that never came to be. His last painting, which was supposed to be a two-piece work, featured a white square grid painted all over the dark surface. A smaller blackish painting should have been installed on the larger section. It featured pastose shapes resembling squarish grids from the 1960s, and pastose shapes arranged in a square at the top and a circle at the bottom. His opus concludes with white lines on a black surface and three-dimensional images. He thus returned to the basic principle of fine art: using lines and dots, and a square painting on a square painting.
Borčić created drawings, paintings and prints featuring a number of spaces that seem fully open, thus alluding to endless spaces. However, some also involved many openings that behave as square-shaped frames. They seem to showcase their material and concrete qualities. Every shape comes from nature itself. Borčić constantly worked to create and maintain a solid, dense world of shapes complementing our perception of them. He was outstanding at recreating shapes from nature (seashells), and therefore his creations seem like a completely new (artistic) world. A reflection of a deliberate plan for a concrete realisation in a myriad of techniques.
Miloš Bašin

Bogdan Borčić was born on 26 September 1926 in Ljubljana where he lived until 1980. In the period 19431–1944 he attended Matej Sternen’s painting course and France Gorše's drawing course. In 1944 he was interned at Dachau. After World War II he in 1950 graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana (with professors F. Mihelič, G. A. Kos, B. Jakac, R. Debenjak, N. Pirnat and S. Pengov). Two years later he finished his post-graduate studies in painting with Prof Gabrijel Stupica.
From 1952 to 1957 he taught drawing and art history at Novo Mesto high school. For ten years he worked as the head of the fine arts department of the Aesthetic Education Centre (later renamed Pionirski Dom). Borčić embarked on various study trips around Europe and developed his creativity in Johnny Friedlaender’s atelier in Paris from 1958 to 1959. In addition, he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts first at the department of painting (from 1969 to 1973) and then at the department of printmaking (from 1973 to 1984). In 1979 he held a series of lectures at the printmaking department of the Fine Arts Academy in Mons, Belgium. He staged around 190 solo exhibitions and participated in many more around the world. Borčić received over fifty awards and acknowledgements in Slovenia and elsewhere. His works are featured in prominent collections in Slovenia and abroad.
He worked in drawing, painting, printmaking, illustrations and objects. He lived in Slovenj Gradec since 1980 where he died on 24 April 2014.