Izidor Cankar

Izidor Cankar (22 April 1886 – 22 September 1958) was a Slovenian author, art historian, diplomat, journalist, translator, and liberal conservative politician.

He was one of the most important Slovenian art historians of the first part of the 20th century, and one of the most influential cultural figures in interwar Slovenia.

Izidor Cankar was born in Šid, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia (now part of the Serbian province of Vojvodina).

[1] His father, Andrej Cankar, was a Slovene tradesman from Inner Carniola, while his mother, Marija Huber, was from a mixed Danube Swabian–Croat family.

[citation needed] The same year he returned to Ljubljana, where he became the editor of the Catholic journal Dom in svet, transforming it into the most prestigious literary magazine in the Slovene Lands.

[citation needed] After the formation of a unified Yugoslav state, he continued his studies in Vienna under Max Dvořák.

Club in Dubrovnik, Cankar voted for the expulsion of pro-Nazi writers from the organization, in contrast to the Croatian and Serbian representatives.

In the late 1930s, he convinced his wife's family to donate money for the construction of the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, of which he served as supervisor.

In 1944, he resigned in protest against the policies of Prime Minister Božidar Purić, who continued to support the Serbian Chetnik resistance movement of Draža Mihajlović even after claims of his collaboration with the Nazi Germans in the fight against Tito's Partisans.

After the Treaty of Vis was signed between the newly appointed Yugoslav Prime Minister in exile Ivan Šubašić and the Yugoslav communist resistance leader Josip Broz Tito in June 1944, Cankar was named Minister of Culture and Telecommunications in the new coalition government.