Biography

Stojan Batič was born into a life of coal mining in the mountains of Slovenia, which he began at 17 years old. At 19, he joined the Partisan war effort against the Nazi occupiers of Slovenia. During the war, he worked with the Cultural Group Kozjansko division and also as a war correspondent. After the war, he wanted to put the horror of war behind him, so he enrolled in the newly created Academy of Fine Arts, a part of the University of Ljubljana, in order to study sculpture; in fact, Batič was the very first student to enroll in the school's new department after the war. At university, he studied under famed Slovenian sculptors Boris Kalin and Francis Smerdu, while also traveling to Paris to study under Ossip Zadkine, being the first Slovenian sculptor to do so. He rose quickly and prominently as sculptor during the Yugoslavia era, creating roughly 40 pieces of public sculpture and memorial works over his roughly 40 year career. Interestingly, the vast majority of this work was all created within Slovenian region, with few (if any) of his total works being completed outside of this area. Among the most notable and admired public works Batič created during his career were the Cankar Battalion spomenik complex in Dražgoše, Slovenia, as well as the Monument to Slovene Peasant Uprisings at Ljubljana Castle.

 

Much of the work of Batič centers around his use of Slovenian myths and legends, where he draws inspiration from poetic nature of the ancient world. In addition, the style he employs in his work are figurative human forms with minimized features, usually subdued to abstract and angular geometric shapes -- a style that very much became his trademark. However, as can be seen in the gallery below, Batič shifted through his career between creating figurative sculptures in a highly realistic fashion and highly reduced/modernist figurative works. Batič was honored with the prestigious Slovenian Prešeren Award in 1960 for his lifetime of contributions to Slovenian arts and culture. Through the decades, even up until the 2010s, he continued to produce new sculptural works. Batič passed away in September of 2015 in Ljubljana at the age of 90, just a few months after the passing of his wife Milena.

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If you wish to visit Stojan Batič's historic sculpture studio which has now been turned into a public museum, it is located at the Švicarija Creative Center at Ljubljana's Tivoli Park, with its coordinates being N46°03'19.0", E14°29'31.3".