The works presented here bring together several related but chronologically distinct groups created during the 1990s and around 2000. They include expressive studies of individual animals, densely entangled creatures, the conflict scenes of Tuataromahija from 1992 and the later sheets gathered under the title Reptilia. Rather than forming a single enclosed cycle, they reveal Pristavec’s sustained return to the animal as a subject open to observation, anatomical analysis and imaginative transformation.

The earlier drawings concentrate on individual animals or closely joined pairs. Reptiles, horned mammals, bats, birds and large felines are brought close to the edges of the paper, frequently filling almost the entire composition. Pristavec identifies each creature through a limited number of strongly emphasised features: the crocodile’s extended jaw, the iguana’s claws and dorsal spines, the spiral horns of a ram or the stretched membranes of a bat’s wings.

Anatomical description is always selective. Heads, jaws, horns, teeth and eyes may be enlarged, compressed or reorganised to intensify the physical and behavioural character of the animal. Several creatures combine reptilian, avian and mammalian features and cannot be identified as a single species. It is this movement between recognition and invention that gives the group the character of a modern bestiary.

The term bestiary should not be understood here in its traditional medieval sense. Pristavec’s animals do not illustrate an established system of moral or religious meanings. Their significance arises primarily from posture, bodily tension and confrontation. An open mouth, defensive spine, raised claw or staring eye becomes an expressive sign capable of suggesting vigilance, aggression, vulnerability or exposure.

Line is the principal agent of this transformation. Short strokes evoke fur, scales and feathers, while heavier contours establish jaws, wings, limbs and horns. Hatching frequently spreads beyond the body into the surrounding paper, following the direction of a movement or radiating from a point of tension. The background therefore ceases to be neutral and becomes visually charged by the presence of the animal.

Pristavec often preserves preliminary contours, corrections and overlapping phases of the drawing. These visible traces reveal how the image was gradually searched for and intensified. In some works, accumulated graphite gives the body weight and density; in others, the animal is reduced to angular divisions and dark geometric segments. Observation and construction remain inseparable: the body is described and simultaneously rebuilt through drawing.

A significant change occurs when the isolated animal is replaced by several creatures engaged in physical conflict. Bodies overlap, bite, restrain and climb across one another until individual anatomies become difficult to separate. Teeth, limbs, spines and twisting tails create opposing directions, while the compressed group begins to function as a single collective organism. This formal entanglement recalls the earlier Množice cycle, although here the human or hybrid figure is replaced by recognisably animal structures.

The conflict becomes the central subject of Tuataromahija, dated 1992. Reptiles no longer appear as isolated specimens but as participants in a dramatic bodily encounter. Elongated tails form sweeping diagonals, open jaws establish opposing forces and raised limbs suggest attack or defence. Although the animals retain reptilian features, their upright positions and concentrated gestures bring the compositions close to the structure of a figural drama.

One work is identified as a two-colour xerograph. Mechanical reproduction compresses the tonal range and reinforces the principal outlines, allowing a complex formation of intertwined bodies to be translated into a clearer graphic structure. Xerography also enabled Pristavec to repeat an image and test variations through additional drawing or coloured intervention. It therefore became part of the creative process rather than merely a means of reproducing a completed composition.

The later Reptilia sheets, created around 2000, return to the reptile through a more exploratory and partly analytical approach. Iguanas, agamas, chameleons and related creatures are shown individually, repeated in groups or distributed across the paper as a sequence of studies. Handwritten species names and brief observations give several sheets the character of working pages in which image, text, observation and memory coexist.

Colour assumes a more independent role in some of these works. Orange, yellow, green and blue articulate individual parts of the reptiles while also creating chromatic relationships that extend beyond natural description. Elsewhere, repeated animals are connected by dense hatching and overlapping contours. The page moves between zoological study and autonomous composition, while repetition transforms separate creatures into a larger visual pattern.

These drawings retain the structural knowledge developed in Pristavec’s Academy studies of skeletons, joints and movement. This anatomical foundation allowed him to enlarge, compress and combine bodily forms without depriving them of physical credibility. Later hybrid and mythological figures would extend the same method into another imaginative territory.

Taken together, the animal drawings reveal a bestiary that is neither illustrative nor taxonomic. The animal becomes a field of pictorial possibilities: observed as a living body, reconstructed through line, placed in confrontation and transformed into an expressive graphic structure. Anatomy, movement and invention remain continuously intertwined.