Janez Pristavec (1947–2008) was a Slovenian painter, printmaker and art teacher whose work grew out of a lifelong fascination with colour, line, material and the human figure. Born in Maribor and trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, where he graduated in 1977, he spent his whole creative life in the city he loved — painting it, drawing its people, and returning to it again and again as a subject.

Pristavec’s art did not follow a single straight line. He moved between observation and abstraction, between a faithful likeness and a few decisive strokes: the faces and bodies of his portraits, the animals and landscapes of his prints and paintings, the crumpled-paper masks of the 1980s, and the mythological visions of his final years. Each return to a familiar subject transformed it — and this restless curiosity is what makes his work so rewarding to explore.

This website presents his artistic estate: works on canvas and paper, portraits and caricatures, prints and mixed media — together with curatorial texts that trace his development across four decades. You are warmly invited to browse the collections, learn about the artist, or get in touch.