Jakob Savinšek

Savinšek was born in the Upper Carniolan town of Kamnik, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (now in Slovenia), where he spent his youth.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, he studied drawing under the tutorship of Rihard Jakopič and sculpture under the supervision of Karla Bulovec Mrak.

A devout Roman Catholic, he decided to join the Slovenian Home Guard, an Anti-Communist militia collaborating with the Wehrmacht against the Partisan resistance.

In the late 1950s, he entered in conflict with the foremost Slovenian sculptor of the time, Stojan Batič, and founded his own artistic circle, composed not only of young and talented visual artist, but of literates and theatre people such as Dino Radojević, Herbert Grün, Saša Vuga, Dušan Pirjevec and Andrej Hieng.

[3] At the beginning of his career, he was influenced by the tradition of Slovene expressionism (especially the works of France Kralj), but he gradually turned to his own modernist style, in which he experimented with the volume of sculpture.