Towards Zero Gravity

Matej Sternen (1870 - 1949)

Sternen was born on 20 September 1870 in Verd pri Vrhniki and died on 28 June 1949 in Ljubljana. From 1888 to 1991 he attended the State School of Crafts in Graz, after which he studied at the School of Arts and Crafts (1892) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (he was admitted to the third year class of Prof Siegfried L'Allemand (1893-96), whereas from 1898 to 1899 he studied in Prof Kasimir Pchwalski's special class in the history of painting). In 1899 he went to Munich where he joined Ažbe's school of painting; he stayed there until his teacher's death in 1905. At Ažbe's school he met Rihard Jakopič and Matija Jama and renewed his friendship with Ivan Grohar. He also met the painter Roza Klein, whom he married in 1907 (they had a daughter, Rozi). Until 1914 he lived and worked most winters in Munich and spent summers in Ljubljana, where for a brief period of time he ran a private painting school with R. Jakopič (1907-1908).
During the First World War (1916-18) he was a draughtsman, photographer and restorer on and behind the frontline. After the war, he moved to Ljubljana. In the area of Mirje he built a house and a studio for himself, where he taught painting and art restoration until 1942. From 1921 to 1930 he taught drawing at the Ljubljana Polytechnic. At the same time, he was a teacher at the Probuda painting school.
Sternen was a painter and restorer. He was fascinated by the human figure and focused mostly on the portrait and female nude. Apart from oil and mural painting, he mastered drawing and was one of the first Slovene artists to explore graphic art.
His first major art restoration project took place in Skaručna in 1898 where he worked as an assistant to Pavle and Lojze Šubic. Later, he worked for the Vienna Central Commission for the Protection of Monuments (1898-1901), and from 1920 until his death he worked for the Monument Office / Institute for the Protection of Monuments in Ljubljana.