Modernism and cultural identity
Joze Plecnik



Peter Krecic describes the architect as a modernist, "whose modernism was always coupled to a deliberate debt to history." Unlike other modernists. he did no reject historical forms or deny the craft of building or its heritage; rather he sought to nurture these.
   A pupil of Otto Wagner in Vienna, Plecnik brought to Slovenia a combination of modernism and a respect for the Palladian legacy. However, his approach was resolutely unideological. He emphasised personal vision and self-expression, and believed these could be promoted by selecting elements from the past. In so doing, it can be argued, he gave modernism a wider frame of reference, an approach supported by the exploitation of new materials such as steel, concrete and iron.
   In his work, for example, in Ljubljana, Plecnik certainly contributed to the development, between the wars, of a Slovene modernism, but at the same time his language was European, even international in scope. He was no crude blood and earth folk nationalist. His work contained an urge for internationalism, but an internationalism which accepts the validity of national characteristics and artistic traditions.
   For Paul Vanner, the architect combines modernism and regionalism; his works bring together local materials and cultural images within a twentieth-century idiom to generate attractive, yet

References
Peter Krecik, Plecnik: the complete works (1993)
Joze Plecnik masterpieces