Matija Jama (1872 - 1947)

Jama was born on 4 January 1872 and died on 6 April 1947 in Ljubljana. From 1878 to 1882 he attended the Graben public school and four years of grammar school in Ljubljana. After that, he moved to Zagreb with his parents (1886 or 1887 - the sources mention both years), where he attended the Gornji Grad grammar school (his drawing teacher was Prof Milan Rogulja). He graduated from grammar school in 1891 (or 1890 - the sources mention both years). Complying with the wishes of his parents, he began his studies of law at the Zagreb Law Faculty in the same year, but in 1892 he went to study painting at the Simon Hollósy school in Munich (where he stayed for a year or two - different information from the sources).
In 1897 he spent some time at Ažbe's school of painting, where he became friends with other Slovene painters in Munich, particularly R. Jakopič. In 1898 he began his studies in the drawing class of Prof Johann Herterich at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts (according to some sources, he attended classes for a month). In 1900 he participated in the First Slovene Art Exhibition in Ljubljana (which in December travelled to Zagreb).
He married the Dutch painter Luiza van Raders, another of Ažbe's students, in Munich in 1902. Later that year they painted together in Slovenia (in the Polhov Gradec area) and Croatia (in the Kraljevac area). At the end of 1902 they returned to Munich, because Luiza was expecting the first of their three children (Matija, Agnes and Madeleine). In the spring of 1904 he participated in a group exhibition at Miethke's in Vienna (at that time, Klub Sava was founded, and he became a member). Later that year, he presented his work at the First Yugoslav Art Exhibition in Belgrade.
In his search for new artistic motifs, he continued to move to different places (the Zagreb area, places on the Sotla and Kolpa rivers, the Munich area, the Danube area near Dürnstein and Vienna, Amsterdam and The Hague in the Netherlands, Belgrade, etc.). From 1915 to 1922 he lived with his family in The Hague, but in 1922 he returned to Ljubljana where, with the exception of short absences, he lived until his death.
He found painting motifs mostly on the Kolpa River and in the region of Gorenjska.
In 1938 he travelled to Venice where he exhibited with other Yugoslav artists at the Venice Biennial. In the same year he was appointed full member of the newly founded Slovene Academy of Science and Art.
As a painter (the total of around 450 works), Matija Jama focused on landscape, portraits and illustration (Dom in svet 1895-1937; his last illustration is a self-portrait from 1942; among others he illustrated three books by Ivan Cankar). He also wrote about art.