The Dutch painter and printmaker Toon Wegner discovered Yugoslavia and Slovenia already in the ‘50s in the past century. He was especially fond of Slovenj Gradec, where he befriended Karel Pečko, often returning to the city in the following years. In 1975 for the international exhibition Peace 75, he designed a unique action of Dutch artists, who donated 4000 prints with different motifs to the families of Slovenj Gradec in order to bring art into every home. The print Yugoslavian Women on a Train was first exhibited in Slovenj Gradec at a solo exhibition in 1965, and it was included in the project A Work of Art in Every Household ten years later. He himself described the realistic scene, in which he depicted tired and sleeping Bosnian women with children with the use of lavish brushstrokes and strong contrasts between light and shadows, as: “… an homage to the country that is, along with the Netherlands, the closest to my heart of all others” (Toon Wegner, Slovenj Gradec Art Pavilion, 1965).

Text: Katarina Hergold Germ