Prešeren Fund Awards
Nikolaj Omersa entered the Slovenian art scene in 1937. He decided to pursue »colour realism« and achieved his first recognition before the war with some of his paintings created strictly in a subtle colour scale, which went on to become the basic feature of his painting style. After 1950, he exhibited a tendency for a firmer structure of the image in terms of a framework filled with colour fields. In terms of motifs, he focused on portraits, still lifes and landscapes. In his final years, he developed a special love for motifs from Ljubljana, but particularly Piran with its surroundings. In these paintings he captured the specific formal and colouristic pulse of the landscape and its architecture, thus emerging as one of the most important artists to depict Slovenia’s coastal region.