INCENTIVE IDEA: A walk through the rebellious art movement

In the last few years, Europe has been celebrating the 120+ years of the formation of the first art movement involving groups of avant-garde German and Austrian artists who organised exhibitions independently of the traditional academies. We could say that it was a rebellious move to cut with the traditional art practices and schools of the time. The art movement was called Sezession or Secession.

Its Vienna counterpart was formed in 1897 and as Ljubljana, today the capital of Slovenia, was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, it also followed the Secesssion, or (as it was also called) the Art Noveau style that was particularly favored and promoted in Vienna by Gustav Klimt. Ljubljana developed its own Art Noveau movement whose beautiful art and design is still to this day to be seen on Ljubljana streets.

To mark the very important artistic period in Europe’s past, the Ljubljana Tourism prepared a special Art Noveau Walk that takes visitors into the past of the ‘rebellious art movement’ which didn’t stay rebellious for long but it rather quickly became very popular among progressive art lovers of the time who ordered their buildings, be it private or public, to wear the expression of the Secession. Any art enthusiast will be astonished by Ljubljana’s glamour of the time. The guided walk takes to the most characteristic secessionist creations that Slovenia’s capital boasts.

The visitors will see the facades of Urbanc Department Store (now Galerija Emporium) and Hauptmann House on the central Prešeren Square, buildings along the Miklošičeva Street like the Cooperative Bank, one of Ljubljana’s most famous buildings, and also to the Miklošičev Park, designed by Slovenian architect Maks Fabiani who also worked in Vienna. Miklošičeva Street takes also past the famous front of the Grand Hotel Union, which was the first modern hotel and had the largest and the most magnificent banquet hall on the Balkans at the time of its creation and that still to these days preserves its secessionist soul.

The tour wraps up at the Congress Square for which should be in our Kongres Magazine particularly pointed out that it was named Congress (Kongresni) due to the Congress of Holy Alliance that brought together important sovereigns, politicians and diplomats of the time to draw a new political map of Europe after Napoleon’s downfall. The Congress of Holy Alliance was held in Ljubljana for four months in 1821, and this proves how the city has been breathing with congresses and meetings for almost 200 years, while the incentive programme of the Art Noveau Walk shows that the city still treasures the meetings industry with its deepened focus on the best it has to offer through its Convention Bureau either from current or from past times.