Tone Kralj is one of the most recognizable Slovene visual artists, exceptional also within the European context. His stance is distinctly ethical, marked with a strongly expressed social sense. He belongs to those artists whose work, due to its distinct idiosyncratic features, resists simplified stylistic and ideological labels that either regionally positioned him mainly as a religious painter or sought primarily a national-iconographic context for his work.

The current exhibition is based on the selection of about eightyfour works from the collections of the National Gallery of Slovenia in Ljubljana and Galerija Božidar Jakac – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Kostanjevica na Krki, where, upon its establishment in 1974, the artist also received a permanent exhibition of works from the Tone Kralj Collection, by which his oeuvre was definitely placed within a more lasting museum context. It is part of a wider collaboration of institutions in presenting national art heritage. It is not only a matter of transportation of works from the regional environmentto the central national institution, but it is a symbolic completion of the artist's institutional path and a renewed estimation of his oeuvre within a wider Slovene and European context.

The exhibition is mainly focused on the period between the years 1919 and 1940, when Kralj’s expression was formed in the dialogue with European modernist streams, from symbolism and expressive figurative art to the New Objectivity and monumental realism. Tone Kralj is represented by painting, sculptural and printmaking oeuvre, together with a very significant segment of his artistic production – illustrations and book design, which also extend into the post-war period. These works are included into the exhibition as part of the artist’s development, since it is exactly the field in which Kralj consistently tests the relation between the figure, the meaning and the narration.

The exhibition also features new acquisitions of the Galerija Božidar Jakac – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art that have not been on public display for decades. The monumental work Salome (1931) will be shown for the first time after the restoration intervention (Restoration Centre – IPCHS), and from the collection of the National Gallery, the monumental painting The last supper (1928/1929) will be shown which was exhibited in 1931 at the International Exhibition of Modern Sacred Art in Padua, but – according to available information – has probably never been on public display in Slovenia and was restored by the restorers of the National Gallery specifically for this exhibition.

An exhibition catalogue has also been published (in Slovenian and English), featuring reproductions of all exhibited works and a text by the exhibition’s author, Goran Milovanović: Tone Kralj: between european modernism, sacred art, and the community ethics.