Moss and silver, 1997 (Courtesy Obalne galerije Piran)
Andraž Šalamun, one of the leading Slovenian painters of the last half-century, has left us forever. With his abundant and tireless creativity, he made a profound imprint on the art scene in Slovenian Istria and in the national and wider international space. Since the 80s, he has exhibited regularly, always with new paintings, also in the Piran Coastal Galleries. He was especially attached to the Loža Gallery in Koper, where he and curator Andrej Medved prepared as many as nine solo exhibitions.
At one of these in 2004, the renowned art critic Ješa Denegri wrote, among other thoughts:
“Painters who intensely see and feel the world around them, who realize their vision of nature in a painting not only with their hands but with their whole body, still exist and are active in their art, because they cannot function and express themselves more completely in any other way. For Šalamun, as a former member of the OHO art group, art has never really meant anything but an immediate and sensual experience of nature, an expression of the body, the inscription of one’s own existence into the eros of the creation of a work of art, and this is exactly how his contemporary painting, in line with his previous works, remains alive and strong."
