Avgust Cernigoj (August 24, 1898, – November 17, 1985) was a Slovenian painter, known for his avant-garde experiments in Constructivism.
He was born in Trieste, then part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.
After finishing Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Trieste, he graduated from the Bologna Academy and went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
Leter on, he become the only Slovenian artist that studied at the famous Bauhaus School in Weimar.
At the Bauhaus, which had a profound impact on his development as an artist, having come into contact with Abstraction, the Russian avant-garde and particularly Constructivism through the works and teachings of Wassily Kandinsky, who brought it from Russia.
After finishing his studies, he returned to Slovenia, where he became friends with the avant-garde poet Sre?ko Kosovel. He taught drawing in city of Postojna from 1920 to 1921.
In 1923 he became a professor at the Secondary Technical School in Ljubljana (today the capitol of Slovenia). The following year, he prepared the first Constructivist exhibition in Slovenia. The exhibits included architectural models, reliefs and sculptures, as well as parts of machines, overalls and politically artistic slogans.
In 1925, he became a political exile due to his socially critical and provocative art and was forced to return to Trieste. There, he co-operated with an avant-garde stage manager Ferdo Delak in the forming of an international avant-garde magazine called Tank. Later, he worked part-time painting decorations on ships until 1936 .
During the World War II he painted churches. After the war, until 1970, he taught drawing at the Slovenian Technical and Vocational Secondary School and at the Teachers’ College in Trieste. He spent the last five years of his life in Lipica.
He died on 17 November 1985 in city of Sežana, Slovenia.
Cernigoj’s main contribution to the Slovenian fine arts lies in the introduction of collage, which broadened the understanding of art and artistic work.
The collection of August Cernigoj Gallery in Lipica, Slovenia, consists about 1,400 of his art. These works, give an overview of ?ernigoj’s body of artistic work and represent the themes he explored in his creative period which spans over sixty years.
A significant part of his oeuvre is graphic works, ranging from woodcuts, linocuts, copperplates, dry points and aquatints. His motives include figural representations, objects and pure abstract works. He combined various elements and symbols and carved them into small formats.
Cernigoj was given the recognition he deserved from the very beginning when his own gallery was opened. It is beyond doubt that Avgust Cernigoj made a significant and invaluable contribution to the history of the Slovenian fine arts movement and was one of the leading figures of the Slovenian historical avant-garde owing to his personality and works of art.