Hinko Smrekar

[1] Smrekar was a member of the Vesna Art Club, which was active in Vienna, and a partisan in the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia.

At the time when, as a collaborator of the Slovene Liberation Front, he was hastily shot by the Italian fascists in the vicinity of the gravel pit used for summary executions (now the Gramozna Jama Memorial), he was living in the "Villa Kurnik" on Alešovčeva Street (No 38) in Šiška.

In that year, Smrekar, together with Maksim Gaspari, visited the art centre of Munich for the first time, where he returned for both short and long periods throughout his life.

His most recent work as an illustrator was his drawings, images and initials for the collection Seven Andersen Fairy Tales for Wise Men and Women.

In the political newspaper Jutro, Elko Justin published an oblique obituary for his friend: a broken spruce tree ("smreka" in Slovenian) is piled on top of the impoverished coffin, which has been nailed with a single carved sheet, and an upside-down letter R lies across the name plate bearing the word "konec", meaning "the end" - a rebus of Smrekar's name.

He worked with all motifs, in all techniques, serious, sad, grotesque, funny, portraits, landscapes, romantic, naturalistic, national and international.

Two of the greatest works of Slovenian graphic art were produced in those years - the cycle of anti-war caricatures Črnovojnik ("The Black Warrior"), in which the artist humorously described his inter-war experiences, and the illustrations of Martin Krpan.