The authorial comic strip most often comes into being without a commission and is removed from excessive commercialism, uniformity, and conventions. It is a kind of creative game, a dynamic discourse with art and narrative, while it also represents a challenge in terms of materials, techniques, and means of representation. In today’s sociocultural space, comics are seen as a vibrant and at the same time socially critical artistic narrative, proffering new considerations, views and conclusions. They deal with the questions of how, why, and in what manner to represent reality, life, and feelings. Their breadth, apparent simplicity, and easy accessibility are aimed at the wider public, above all those open to tiny panels filled with brief, but dense narrative, combined into a rhythm of images and directed through a continuous story.

The present exhibition at the City Art Gallery Ljubljana (a part of The Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana) concentrates on the role of drawing in Slovene comics from inception to the present day. In this medium the drawing is particularly important as a tool of expression and confession. It gives comics their visual narrative power. This exhibition represents almost all comic strip authors who have worked in Slovenia and made comics a valid form of aesthetic art within our artistic past and present. The first two survey exhibitions Risba na Slovenskem I [Drawing in Slovenia I] and Risba na Slovenskem II [Drawing in Slovenia II], mounted at the National Gallery of Slovenia in Ljubljana and the City Art Museum Ljubljana, initiated a systematic art historical, exhibition-based analysis of drawing. This exhibition represents a continuation of the professional investigation and exhibition presentation of drawing in the context of art in Slovenia. After looking into the role and meaning of drawing in painting and sculpture, it is now the turn of comics, which have recently gained in significance, meaning, and social relevance. Their immediacy knows no compromise; they are effective and varied.

While preparing the exhibition, the choice of authors and their work was aided by various specialists and connoisseurs: the art historian and critic Dr Damir Globočnik; the art historian and comic strip artist Jakob Klemenčič, M.A.; curator and editor Katerina Mirović, one of the originators of the magazine ‘Stripburger’; comic strip author Gašper Rus; comic strip author and theoretician Iztok Sitar; and Vojko Urbančič, a journalist working for the ‘Delo’ newspaper. These contributors also authored the texts that accompany the individual artists, with special attention devoted to the role of drawing in their respective comics. Iztok Sitar added an extensive historical survey of the development of comics in Slovenia. Jakob Klemenčič added a few words about the aesthetics of comic strip drawing. The exhibition was mounted and the extensive catalogue was prepared by curators Dr Sarival Sosič and Alenka Trebušak, both of the City Art Museum Ljubljana. In the catalogue the artists are listed according to their date of birth, in order to enable easier and more complete insight into the continuity of comic strip development and the developmental input of drawing in its visual expression. The exhibition and the professional analysis it engenderes aim to provide insight into comic strip production in Slovenia. They attempt to challenge the stereotypes that categorize comics as a less worthy, creatively less important medium that remains on the margins of sociocultural events. We posit the opposite opinion: comics, with their penetrating, seemingly simple narrative and clean drawing bring to art a poetic character, an artistic and content-based aesthetic image. All this makes them worthy of being included, on equal terms, in the exhibition activities of our galleries and demands an even more engaged investigation and analysis.