Drago j. Prelog was born Karl Julius Prelog on November 4, 1939 in Celje, Slovenia and grew up in Upper Styria. After completing the decorative painting department at the School of Applied Arts in Graz, Prelog began his studies under Albert Paris Gütersloh at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1958. During his studies in the late 1950sThe artist dealt with the implementation and representation of lines, strokes and characters in different ways and developed abstract central formations inspired by Wols and Rainer, which consist of lines lying above and below each other.From 1960 onwards, Prelog filled the picture carrier with lines and abstracted characters, except for the lower, free area, which provides a glimpse of the structured material underneath. These works marked the beginning of his scriptural phase, which lasted for over a decade. In a concentrated, meditative way of working, he created increasingly dense, multi-layered pictures, which the artist broke up and opened again in a further development step, also using strong colours – first horizontally, later also vertically. In the early 1970s, these “openings” gave rise to objective “bomb and explosion pictures”, in which the characters that dominated the scriptural phase were increasingly pushed back. The first topographical and landscape-architectural works followed: his map and mountain pictures as well as the “St. Stephen’s Towers”, derived from the motif of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, were created, in which Prelog took up both graphic and painterly components.After overcoming a creative crisis in 1975, Prelog developed the independent group of works known as “Umlaufbilder” (circulating pictures), in which the artist approaches the picture carrier lying on a table from all four sides, which he considers to be equally important, runs around the painting surface and draws lines: often with several pens in one hand, drawing with the left hand as a right-hander, also with the help of a remote controlled toy car, or using a syringe to allow space for chance in his work process.In 1986, the artist developed “Prelography”. In these “skin and scale images”, Prelog uses stencils in iris printing – here too he plays with the principle of chance – to create color-graduated structures on images and prints that are reminiscent of snake skins. However the line is and remains the defining element in his oeuvre.
