The Greatest Satirist You’ve Never Heard Of

Hinko Smrekar is a challenging figure to present to Americans, as few of us are well-versed in early 20th-century East-Central European politics.

We’re even less familiar with the history and culture of Slovenia, Smrekar’s home country.

But Americans can understand and relate to rebels, people who speak truth to power and fight for freedom of thought. Hinko Smrekar was one of those, and more. A cartoonist, political satirist, and illustrator, Smrekar responded to the sweeping geopolitical shifts of his day by critiquing authoritarian governments and standing up for the interests of the common person despite the dangers of doing so. His most pivotal working years were the decades leading up to and between WWI and WWII, when nationalist movements challenged the freedoms of people across the globe.

While many of his contemporaries picked up the proverbial sword, Smrekar smote enemies with pen and ink, drafting over 2,000 artworks in his lifetime, 90% of which were works on paper. These tracts, and posters, book illustrations, and prints, largely reflected Smrekar’s political activism. At other times they showcased his critiques of modern society or fascination with the occult. But it was for his political subversions that Smrekar would ultimately suffer. During Mussolini’s occupation of Slovenia in 1942, Italian forces arrested and killed the artist for walking down the street holding a resistance pamphlet.

Although Smrekar is still a hero to many Slovenians, he remains mostly unknown outside the country. A new exhibition, English-language catalog, and accompanying website—developed with Getty Foundation support through The Paper Project initiative—aim to change that.

The exhibition Hinko Smrekar: 1883–1942, on view at the National Gallery of Slovenia in Ljubljana through February 2022, is the first retrospective of the artist in 70 years. Containing more than 300 artworks, some only recently discovered, the exhibition features the largest selection of Smrekar’s work to ever be on display. The accompanying catalog and website place Smrekar into the regional and European discourse, granting access to an understudied chapter in the prints and drawings field.

“Despite being such an indelible part of Slovenian culture, Smrekar’s work has never been fully collected and properly researched,” said Alenka Simončič, lead curator of Hinko Smrekar: 1883–1942 who has studied the artist for the past eight years. “This new exhibition finally gives him his due and celebrates what everyone in Slovenia knows: he was a vital voice for social justice and an uncompromising advocate for the people. Now more than ever, those who face violence and corruption around the world can learn from and be inspired by his honesty and courage.”

Smrekar’s first major infraction against the authorities came in 1914, when he was put on trial for insulting the Austrian Kaiser Franz Joseph I. A year later, he was arrested and imprisoned for mocking German soldiers. Afterward, he continued to be subjected to frivolous lawsuits that he responded to with sarcastic imagery. His “crimes” led to devastating consequences, including when an anonymous complaint sent him to a series of internment camps for political prisoners; his deteriorating mental state finally led to his release. Nevertheless, Smrekar continued to fight injustice. His home served as a secret meeting place for the resistance during the early years of World War II. Because newspapers recoiled from printing his more controversial content, Smrekar drafted hundreds of unpublished works (some of which he rebelliously displayed on a bulletin board in front of his home), including unflattering caricatures of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.

Despite his keen insight into humanity’s moral weaknesses, Smrekar as a caricaturist was not above adopting the cultural stereotypes of his day. He sometimes relied on racist imagery or offensive tropes to get his point across. These instances make clear that Smrekar was both heroic and flawed, capable of struggling with the same impulses he called out in others.

Long before the atrocities of World War II, Smrekar observed that the era he was living in was “a time of general corruption, exuberant imposters, confusing theories, sensational programs...a time of spirit-destroying dictatorship of machine and engineering.” The world, he lamented, will be governed “till its very end by the three sister-beasts: Stupidity, Malice and Envy. The ruler of the world will always be only the one who knows how to yoke them to his triumphant carriage.”

These acerbic sentiments are on full display in his art. In the drawing God of Our Age, also called Modern Pharaoh, Smrekar depicts an enormous, armored figure being worshiped by a submissive, kneeling crowd. The all-powerful ruler reigns over his subjects like an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, sitting atop the base of a pyramid while holding an ankh—an ancient symbol of eternal life—in one hand, and a steel whip in the other. Wires affixed to tall buildings in the background connect like puppet strings to the pharaoh’s head, which hides the figure of a man—akin to the con-man wizard in the Wizard of Oz—who subjugates people to his “divine” will.

In The Biceps and the Brains, Smrekar continues his commentary on the abuse of power by depicting four bulked-up, menacing athletes picking on a bookish scholar. To Smrekar, governments behaved the same way: they flexed their power and intimidated citizens into submission. He believed that power, unchecked by the countervailing influences of compassion and justice, was a stain on a nation and its people.