Nikolaj Pirnat (10 December 1903, Idrija, Austria-Hungary – 9 January 1948, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia) was a Slovene painter and sculptor.

He spent four and a half years studying at the Academy of Arts in Zagreb, graduating in sculpting alongside Ivan Meštrović in 1925.

In 1928 he moved from Maribor to Ljubljana, where he held a solo exhibition of his paintings[2] and started working as an illustrator in the editorial office of the liberal newspaper Jutro until the breakout of the Second World War.

[3] After the capitulation of Italy in 1943 and the subsequent liberation of the camp, he joined the Yugoslav partisans and worked at the headquarters' art propaganda department.

Following the end of the war and the creation of the Socialist Yugoslav state in 1945, he was appointed professor of drawing at the newly established Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana.