Emilija Bucik Razman

Emilija Bucik Razman (16 July 1935 – 28 June 2024) was a Slovenian-American painter and illustrator. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljan a and initially worked as an artist in the Slovenian Littoral, mostly painting sacred art. Her mother, Emilija Makarovič (1909–2000), and her father, Ivan Bucik (1902–1992), were both farmers from Kanalski Vrh. She had eight siblings, of whom one sister and five brothers survived to adulthood.

Career

In Slovenia After completing her studies, she returned to the Slovenian Littoral, where she worked primarily in religious art and landscape painting. During this period, she painted several ceiling frescoes at the Franciscan monastery of Kostanjevica near Nova Gorica. Her elder brother, Janko Bucik, who worked as a designer under the name John Bucci, also lived there. Alongside her employment, she continued to paint. Her subjects consisted mainly of landscapes, still lifes, and wildlife scenes, as well as some portraits. Among her works was a 1977 portrait of Marie Černe Prisland, a publicist, editor and co-founder of the Slovenian Women's Union of America, and a painting of Frederic Baraga for St. Joseph's Church in Joliet, Illinois, completed in 1976. Her landscapes depicting Slovenia were particularly popular among Slovene Americans. In February 1971, she held a successful exhibition of her work at the Bled Slovenian Home in Chicago. Her postcards featuring Slovenian motifs were also popular.

Slovenian Women's Union of America and Zarja In April 1971, she and her sister joined Branch No. 2 of the Slovenian Women's Union of America (SWUA; later the Slovenian Union of America) in Chicago. This marked the beginning of her more than three decades of collaboration with the union's magazine, , which was edited by Corinne Novak-Leskovar. The first issue of Zarja to feature her illustrations was the May 1971 issue (volume 43, number 5), which was dedicated to Mother's Day. She died of cancer in Palm Harbor on 28 June 2024. She was buried there.