Valček za 4

Vienna, 1904. The opening of a new exhibition. The works of Grohar, Jama, Sternen and Jakopič arouse a lot of attention. The Vienna art critics are enthusiastic, they praise the recognizability, the style. The beginning has to be found ten or fifteen years earlier. Anton Ažbe, a painter from the Poljanska dolina valley, opened his school of painting in Munich. The atmosphere here is more lively, artistically more "modern" than in Vienna, so the four painters soon find themselves among Ažbe's students such as Kandinski and Javlenski. But they feel closer to the French impressionists. Therefore they start painting outside, in nature. The critics in Ljubljana refuse them as "modernist epigons". The paintings are not selling, so they decide to do an exhibition in Vienna. It is a success and the painters expect that the doors of European galleries are open to them.