Plečnik's architecture featured in recent foreign publications
The first half of this year has brought an appealing range of professional publications on architecture, which featured the works of Jože Plečnik as well as the related plans that are kept in the Plečnik Collection of the Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana.
The Swiss publisher gta Verlag, ETH Zürich, which specialises in professional books on architecture, urban studies, landscape architecture and renovation of cultural heritage buildings, has published Bibliotheksbauten, a book in German. The selection of library buildings designed by various architects of world renown includes Plečnik's unique National and University Library. It is presented with an array of photographs and Plečnik's plans that originate in the Plečnik Collection of the Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana.
At the end of May, an exhibition opened in the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the death of Otto Wagner under whom Plečnik graduated with distinction. Authors of the exhibition also published the exhibition catalogue Post Otto Wagner. From the Postal Savings Bank to Post-Modernism. The catalogue includes a detailed presentation of Plečnik’s early project, the Zacherl House in Vienna, comprising sketches, plans and archive photographs, and a selection of his chairs which are labelled as proto-postmodernism.
The exhibition that also comprises two reproductions from the Plečnik collection, i.e. Plečnik sketches for the Zacherl House and the Church of the Holy Spirit, only remains on view until 30 September. For more information, please visit this link.
At the beginning of June, the eagerly awaited architectural exhibition Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980, opened in The Museum of Modern Art, New York. For the exhibition, an iconic item was lent from the Plečnik Collection: a model of the unrealised Slovenian parliament, Plečnik’s Cathedral of Freedom, and also two original plans: the cross-section and floor plan of its second floor. Authors of the exhibition also included the cross-section of Plečnik’s parliament in the exhibition catalogue where it accompanied the introductory essay by Vladimir Kulić, 'Building brotherhood and unity: architecture and federalism in socialist Yugoslavia'. The story and importance of this colossal project were briefly presented in the section 'Constructing republican identities'.
The exhibition which has been the talk of New York, according to Đivo Đurović, correspondent of the Croatian online paper Telegram, will be on view in the US metropolis until 13 January 2019. To read all about it, you can visit MoMA's official webpage.