Avgusta Šantel

Avgusta Šantel (21 July 1876 – 2 December 1968) was a Slovenian painter, teacher and printmaker. She created the first Slovenian artistic postcard for print. Her mother, Avgusta von Aigentler (1852–1935), also known as Avgusta Aigentler Šantel, was a painter, whose portraits were very popular in Gorizia at the time, and later a painting teacher at the Girls' High School in Gorizia, and her father was Anton Šantel (1845–1920), a high-school teacher of mathematics and physics in Gorizia. She had six siblings, three of whom survived to adulthood: Henrika Šantel (1874–1940), a painter; Saša Šantel (1883–1945), a painter and composer; and Danica Šantel (1887–1920), a teacher and amateur painter. Avgusta Šantel's first drawing teacher was her mother. From 1882 to 1890 she attended primary school in Gorizia, There she met the architect Ivan Jager, who encouraged her to create a postcard for print, after he heard from her that in the summer of 1898, while on holiday with her mother, she had already been making unique lithographic postcards and sending them to her sister Henrika in Munich, where the latter was studying. During the First World War she left Pula and found refuge with a friend in Lower Carniola, later returning to the city. There she was also very active in music, playing the violin and working with the Maribor branch of the Slovenian music society Glasbena matica. In 1929 her mother and sister moved to Ljubljana. Her subjects were mainly landscapes and views of the places where she lived, and flower still lifes; portraits and figure compositions are less common.

She was a member of the Vesna art club, whose members included her sister Henrika, her brother Saša, her future sister-in-law, the artistic embroiderer Ruža Sever Šantel, the painter Maksim Gaspari, the sculptor Svitoslav Peruzzi, the painter Melita Rojc, the illustrator Hinko Smrekar, and the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović. With Vesna she exhibited at the 1st Yugoslav Art Exhibition in 1904 in Belgrade.

In Maribor she became a member of the Grohar art club, whose members included the painter Viktor Cotič, the general and poet Rudolf Maister, her sister Henrika, the painter, teacher, and writer Špelca Mladič, Chezh painter Ludmila Kleinmondová and the sculptor and printmaker Nikolaj Pirnat. With the club she appeared at the 5th Yugoslav Art Exhibition in Belgrade in 1922 and at an exhibition of Slovene artists in Hodonín (now in the Czech Republic) in 1924. She paid particular attention to the precise depiction of vegetation, aided by her own herbarium. In 2006, her memoirs, together with those of her mother and brother, were published by Nova revija in the book Življenje v lepi sobi (Life in a Beautiful Room).

Later life and death After retiring she moved to Ljubljana to live with her mother and sister Henrika, with whom she remained until their deaths. She never married and had no children. She continued to work prolifically as an artist. Her mother died in 1935, and her sister Henrika five years later. She held her first solo exhibition in 1955, showing her watercolors in Ljubljana, and later mounted one more solo show, also of watercolors. She died on 2 December 1968 in Ljubljana.

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