Seeking and Defining Beauty

Authors of the exhibition Livija Pandur, Tanja Lužar, Živa Kleindienst

“Art is searching for and defining beauty. This is the essence of our being and existence.”

Through theatre photography and other archival materials, the exhibition presents six productions by Tomaž Pandur from the period when he was the artistic director of the Drama of the Slovene National Theatre Maribor (1989–1996). The core of the exhibition are Angelo Božec’s black-and-white photos, which serve as a convincing document of Pandur’s creative vision, his immense passion for creating new worlds and his signature poetics to which he remained loyal until the end of his artistic career.

Already as a young director, Pandur demonstrated an indisputable command of the immense power of visual symbolic language, which he used to transform classical texts into daring and suggestive stage worlds with innovative stagings, irresistibly appealing to the audiences around the world. The productions that Pandur created in the Drama in Maribor during his seven-year tenure moved the boundaries of theatre art, they excited and also upset. Faust, Hamlet, Carmen, La divina commedia (Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso), Russian Mission and Babylon left an indelible mark on the theatre of Maribor and Slovenia and placed it on the world theatre map.

Exhibition opening 11 June at 19.30
Guided tour 12 June at 19.30

The exhibition will also be open to the public between 12 April and 5 June at the Maribor Art Gallery.

From the cycle of events dedicated to Tomaž Pandur.