Budding Fountain in front of Vila Zora, the seat of the Bled Municipality, 2002
Slavko Oblak was affected by water and nature during his early childhood years. He was born in Rečica, a village near Bled from where numerous streams flow into Lake Bled. A carpenter like his father and a master florist like his mother, Slavko aspired to reach higher and enrolled into the Munich Arts Academy, where he became acquainted with the casting of bronze, the material which he used to create many fountains with floral motifs in the Bavarian town of Landshut. Near the town, Oblak built a house with its own foundry and a self-sufficient estate. His sculptures, an expression of his harmonious coexistence with nature, are carefully placed in the natural setting to complement its landscape elements. Oblak always perceived Bled through a lens of nature-like forms. In 1962 he made a plaque in which he portrayed Bled with an image of the island church surrounded by round, bud-like formations.
The Budding Fountain in front of the townhouse takes the form of a sphere which has just split open into three equal slices to allow the water to burst out from the core. A floral bud is the basis for growth and formation of an inflorescence. They can grow to a large size, as is best demonstrated in a cabbage, which is just an overgrown sprout. The opening of the bud symbolizes spring and the birth of new life; it is a long-awaited instant, a promise of future growth. Oblak presented this instant through a dramatic play of shadows and sunlight falling on the parts of the bud while it is brought to life by the water from the foundation, softly caressing the smooth bronze surface, subtle visual effects such as shine and mirroring of the surroundings on its surface. The fountain basin is in the shape of a circle that spreads concentrically to the outer paved surface, resonating growth and new life to be provided by the wise town authorities.
The Cyclamen by the lake, 1997
One of the best views of Bled Castle is from the path that runs along the lake past Slavko Oblak’s Cyclamen. Compared to the Budding Fountain in front of the town hall, this sculpture is much greater in size and more figurative, its softly folded petals emanating a sense of life and movement.
The sculpture depicts the Alpine or purple cyclemen, a plant with sweetly scented, pink to purple flowers, which grows mainly in forests and clearings across Slovenia. It is easiest to spot in late summer or autumn, when it blooms. Leaves are heart- or kidney-shaped and have a colour pattern that differs from plant to plant, with a red-purple underside. The locals used to give the cyclamen more poetic names to illustrate the plant’s mix of beauty and danger, as the cyclamen is poisonous. Its magical attributes are luck, protection, fertility and lust. Women used cyclamen when they wanted to get pregnant or to spark passion, while the scent of cyclamen flowers was supposed to soothe an ailing heart. Women also picked cyclamen – a Christian symbol of Mother Mary’s sorrow – to decorate their homes, church altars, graves, chapels, crucifixes, and else.
The use of the cyclamen may have changed through time, but its scent has kept its irresistible charm. It is interesting that according to some UK literature, the most sweetly scented cyclamen can be found in the Lake Bled area.
Oblak recreated the cyclamen in all its richness and diversity – gentle and fragile, but also as an ominous threat when seen under dramatic lights. Its tiny stalk bearing large petals seems to rise directly from the fertile soil with a strong tendency for movement and growth. These depictions reminiscent of enormous blossoms from earlier geological periods blend in with the surrounding castle and vegetation, in which the luscious leaves function like nature-based sensors, ears tapping into the surrounding sounds. The smooth and rough texture of gently folding leaves creates a game of light and shadow, giving an impression that it is guided by a mysterious life force, vitalism. This vital force is an actual metaphor to describe a creative act like a magical moment when internal matter suddenly becomes impregnated with life, movement and living form.
The Bird of Bled
A bird has landed in front of the Bled Congress Centre — another grand sculpture by Slavko Oblak, echoing the style of the artist’s other sculptures that stand in the lakeside park and within the grounds of Bled Castle. The sculpture, viewed alongside the Congress Centre, appears as a unified symbol of creativity. The connection between these symbols is not difficult to discern, born as they are from the efforts of generations of cultural workers on the one hand, and the artist’s donation as a gesture of homage and respect to his birth town on the other. The academically trained sculptor Slavko Oblak worked and lived for most of his creative life near Landshut, Austria, on an idyllic farm, where he also set up a foundry for his bronze sculptures. It was there that the artist cast the Bird of Bled, one of the many sculptures that demonstrate the harmonious relationship with the places that inspired them. The Bird of Bled was created back in 1977 and was originally titled Bathing Adler (‘Adler’ is German for eagle). The sculpture is cast in an urban, dynamic organic form, reminiscent of a bird.
Bled’s most recent artistic acquisition is a large-format sculpture that exudes monumental presence, combining physical grandeur with the graceful composition of a bird at play in water. One wing is raised, the other is against the body. The head is turned to the side, with one foot and wing resting on the ground. The entire composition is imbued with the characteristic tension unique to Oblak’s figures, evoking a sense of movement. Visibly barely at ease, the bird’s energy is captured in the fundamental forms and motions of the body, stylised in the manner of Henry Moore, through a similar interplay of negative and positive space. The rough, uneven surface of the sculpture conveys a sense of pulsating corporeality and even plumage. Oblak has created a magnificent sculptural work, representing a new type of bird that radiates inner life and warmth through its pulsating forms, embodying the playful ease shared by humans and animals alike.
The sculpture was unveiled on 25th May 2024, in honour of the artist’s 90th birthday.
Castle Blossom in the castle park, 2021
Castle Blossom Castle Blossom is one of the four sculptures Slavko Oblak has donated to Bled. The other three include the Cyclamen by the lake from 1997, the Budding Fountain in front of the Zora town hall from 2002, the statue of Mary, Mother of God, in the chapel of Bled Castle, 2004. All these works aesthetically compliment and elevate the wonderful locations where they are placed. Slavko Oblak is a native of Bled who has found his second home on a farm in Kumhausen near Landshut and set up his own foundry where he casts sculptures that adorn and furnish many public buildings and parks in Landshut, known locally as ‘the city of fountains and public sculptures’. All his works exhibit a deep relationship with nature, which the sculptor has been nurturing for his entire life.
Castle Blossom Castle Blossom is a large, lively sculpture that looks like a traffic lights or an animal with two raised ears. From a bronze base grows an flat elongate stem which branches into two kidney-shaped leaves, similar to the ones seen in Cactus.
The leaves are offset and spaced, seemingly fluttering to all sides, communicating with the surroundings.
The sculpture is placed in the castle park, which was completely renovated in 2019 by the Bled Culture Institute. A year later, the park received the Castle Blossom, a magnificent leafy plant which complements the foliage of the Castle park, its form mirroring the shape of the castle.
Oblak has made a kinesthetic, quiet metaphor of the bonds between man, nature and technology. His work is an inspiration for a sustainable coexistence with nature and a metaphor of unrelenting devotion and commitment to nature.
Statue of Mary, Mother of God in the Bled Castle chapel, 2004
Not all artists who create religion-themed works of art are religious. Unlike them, Slavko Oblak of a man of deep faith. Using his favourite material, bronze, Oblak has cast hundreds of religious objects, ranging from Holy Family and Redeemer plaques to medals and large-scale sculptures of the Holy Family with baby Jesus. Oblak creative interest was in the object and in the environment, allowing the sculptor to create works in collaboration with the technology and in response to man and the environment, which he manifested in the small-scale masterpiece Mary, Mother of God on a pedestal. Oblak donated the sculpture to Bled Castle in 2002. Given that Oblak acts in his capacity of a sculptor, a trained carpenter, and an architect, the sculpture must always be viewed as part of the castle chapel. He did not only blend architecture and sculpture, but also included the frescoes in the room. Simply put, he did everything to engage the viewer and inspire the belief in the Revealer and Mary, whose name means ‘beloved by God’. According to Christian teachings, Mary conceived and gave birth to Jesus Christ through the power of God. The cult of Mary originates in the Christian asceticism, and in the Western Roman Catholic Church it is related to the romantic and chivalrous devotion to women in general.
The church prioritizes devotion to Mary as the ‘queen of saints’ and recognizes her right to ultimate respect. The highlights of the cult are special days dedicated to Mary, as well as churches, societies and orders that carry her name. Dogmas of the immaculate conception (Pius IX, 1854) and ascension (Pius XII, 1950) were publicly proclaimed.
Oblak gives us a full-body figure of Mary with a child. The only way to understand its majesty and impact is through a metaphor. Mary’s body is reduced to the most essential elements – the shape of a circle and triangle as the archetype of the perfect shape, the triangle between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The sculptor transposes the relationship between the spiritual and the physical into bronze. We see a child and a saint standing calmly in front of us without any irrelevant information. The child – Jesus – is shown with a small head and a large halo, his body hidden underneath a wide smooth cloak, gently folding at the edges. He seems to be hovering above the ground as befits a divine being e seems floating above ground, befitting to a divine creHe seems. The sculptor used the same texture approaches in the statue of Mary. A large halo surrounding an undefined face, growing into a smooth and shining cloak interrupted by a rough-surface square which passes into a long drapery with vertical folds.
Slavko Oblak made his first draft of the sculpture in 2000, the year when some deeply religious people expected to the world to end. This sparked an increased interest in religion, and Bled commissioned the sculptor who was born in Bled but spent most of his life in West Germany. As the 1000th anniversary of the first written mention of Bled Castle approached, Oblak was invited to commemorate the occasion with one of his works He needed to connect the anniversary with the oldest preserved architecture in Bled, the castle chapel. Oblak was not keen on turning the occasion into a major ceremony, but chose to transfer deep religion through a bronze figure to an individual, like a peaceful, meditative ticket to spirituality.
The sculptor engages an individual in several ways, through the sculpture and the entire chapel. The fresco in the background is of the image of the Holy Face of Jesus on Veronica’s veil, painted in such intricate folds that it appears to be moving, while the saints on both sides of the presbytery are looking towards the sculpture, inviting everyone present to join in the worship of Mary.
Mary with Jesus on the pedestal near the saints is mystically illuminated from above and behind. If we face the altar in the morning with the sunlight on the statues and look upward, we can see the depiction of the Holy Trinity: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the light emanating from the Holy Spirit towards the sculpture the physical and spiritual power come together. We should not forget that Oblak is a master at positioning his sculptures: as a carpenter and architect, he is familiar with the tricks that make magic happen. Oblak goes to great lengths to help us feel the spiritual moment of the family coming together and sharing a deep meditative conversation. Not rationally, but through the body and senses, individuals now feel the spiritual awakening, a strong emotional experience which is the consequence of the unity with our world and the spiritual world.