Petra Derganc - Evening Bathing

Petra Derganc (1984) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, where she graduated in 2010. In 2014, she obtained her master’s degree in artistic printmaking from Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata. Until 2015, she participated in numerous group exhibitions, after which she maintained her connection to art primarily through printmaking, specifically linocut technique. In 2020, she resumed painting and developed her mature artistic expression. She currently lives and works in Ljubljana.

As exhibition curator Saša Bučan wrote:
“Both her earlier, graphic works and her more recent paintings are marked by Petra’s temperament—one that seeks, desires, and shares with us a life that the urban environment does not provide. This is why she continuously returns to these moments in her creative work, traveling—if only for a few moments—into her own land of longing. Her work is not an interpretation of the present or real time, but rather of past events, which the artist vividly spices up through her creations.

In printmaking, a medium she has remained loyal to since her student years, she creates meaningful, seductive, and often humorous diary-like records that emerge almost spontaneously whenever she feels the urge to ‘travel’ back in time—even if only through the blade on a linoleum block.

Petra Derganc’s prints capture completely random and ordinary moments of holiday idleness—people, often her acquaintances, and sometimes merely accidental figures. While human figures tend to dominate the space in her prints, the opposite is true of her painting, which she has increasingly embraced since around 2020.”