JUTA KRULC: LIVING WITH GARDENS

Center of Architecture and Dessa gallery have organized the exhibition of the original sketches and plans of gardens, designed by famous Slovene architect, Mrs Juta Krulc. Three gardens in Žiri are presented also through the photography of Polona Mlakar Baldasin. The opening speach and presentation was made by mag. Gojko Zupan.

In front of the gallery we have placed two temporary gardens in wooden boxes. The planting was designed by Mrs Juta Krulc and sponsored by Gardener Levičnik.

The exhibition will last until 29 August 2015.

To look, to see, to understand, to feel

Juta Krulc is the oldest Slovenian architect. She was born a year before the beginning of the First World War in Radovljica and graduated in architecture in the class of her compatriot, architect Ivan Vurnik. She worked as a drafter on one of his most well-known works, the Radovljica Swimming Pool Complex. Her life path led her to the east of the former Yugoslavian Monarchy where she designed several buildings and took care of her family.

Her constant curiousity and creativity led her into the field of plant analysis, studying carefully every flower that she drew. She developed into a landscape architect five decades before this title even exsisted in our region and was given to designers of gardens and landscapes.

Juta Krulc is a successor of the great, from Le Notre (1613-1700) on. Valvasor (1643-1693), a contemporary of this great gardener, recorded houndreds of gardens of mansions and castles in Slovenia. Later, as Juta Krulc was young, there were a few other well-known garden arrangers such as Cecil Pinsent (1884–1963), Georg Potente (1876–1945) and Ilse Fischerauer (1903–1945). Creating new park landscapes and designed gardens in time of post-war crisis was not popular. In that time Ciril Jeglič (1897-1988) wrote articles on plant collections and new garden design for gardeners. In the shadow of the professor his assistant at the Faculty for Agronomy, Juta Krulc, dilligently drew pictures of plants for the Phenological Atlas of Yugoslavia.

The time for the development of the expertize was not right yet. Juta Krulc, seemingly a fragile lady, was six decades ago one of the first designers that bravely decided to take on a freelance occupation of designing gardens. She designed the Villa Tartini garden in Strunjan, redesigned the Brdo estate park landscape. She made hundreds of plans for private family gardens in Slovenia. Her designs were always adapted to the climate and spatial endowments. Without stuctural or color aggresiveness she introduced perennials into her landscapes. She designed new, calm syntheses, she opened new perceptions of harmony between buildings and gardens, utilitarity and aesthetics. Nowdays the younger generations travel to her in Žiri and her Kržišnik garden. It was her experimental surface, laboratory and silent counsel. She knows that living elements in open space do not subordinate to human; we can only refinely co-compose them and cohabit with the nature.

Gojko Zupan

Juta Krulc, biography

Juta Zdešar Krulc (1913, Radovljica) studied at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana after finishing the Women Gymnasium in Ljubljana. She graduated in 1937 in the class of prof. Ivan Vurnik with a thesis on Swimming Pool Complex in Radovljica. She passed the public engineer accreditation in Belgrade where she worked in the office of architect Mihajl Nesić until 1940. Between 1953 and 1957 she worked as an assistant of prof. Ciril Jeglič at the Faculty of Agronomy in Ljubljana, assisting at the course Garden Art and Landscape Architecture. During this time she collaborated at planning of Volčji potok botanic garden. In 1955 the Yugoslavian Hydrometeorological Institute in Belgrade published a Phenological Atlas of Yugoslavia with her drawings of plants, plant deseases and bird and animal pests. Her work includes more than 300 ladscape plans for public spaces and private gardens. She supplemented her professional practice with a constant study of Slovenian plants and botanical drawings. First presentation of her work was done in 1993 by Irena Keršič an coworkers at the Marjan Lovšin Gallery in Ljubljana. In 2011 Juta's drawings were exhibited at the 20th anniversary of Omorika garden centre in Muta. In 2012 she received a recognition award for her work in Žiri along with an exhibition of her work and plans for more than 30 gardens in Žiri. Photographies of her realized gardens and landscapes were in recent years published in magazines Ambient, Hiše, Vrtnar, Rože in vrt, Delo in dom, Delo in dom plus and several other publications.