An academic painter with a broad, erudite knowledge, a long-standing popular art teacher and the unstoppable organiser of numerous art exhibitions in Bled – all this is Mr Janez Ravnik. Over nearly 70 years, he created 1500 works of art, mostly paintings and drawings, and about 100 wooden sculptures. He was an outstanding teacher at the Bled Primary School and a tireless organiser of art exhibitions at the Bled Festival Hall. For his work, the Municipality of Bled awarded him the title of Honorary Citizen in 2005.
Janez Ravnik was born in 1929 in Bohinjska Bistrica, where he attended primary school until 1941. During the war he was deported to a German camp and was lucky to return to his hometown after the war. In 1950 he graduated from the school of design in Ljubljana, and in 1955 he graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts in Zagreb, under Prof. Željko Hegedušič. He also passed exams for fresco, mosaic and stained glass with Prof. Palčič. In Zagreb, he says, there were also many opportunities for practical work. At the end of his studies, he met his future wife in that city, with whom he first lived in Bohinj.
For many years he was an art teacher at the Bled Primary School, where he was invited by Melita Vovk. The popular art teacher and long-standing organiser of art exhibitions in Bled is not only remembered by many generations of pupils, but also by many artists from Slovenia and abroad. He has organised many excellent art exhibitions at the Bled Festival Hall. They were excellently organised in the summer season at the Bled Festival Hall. They were highly publicised and their organisers highly respected by both the general and professional public.
The last exhibition of his works, a retrospective, was held in 2019 at the Festival Hall in Bled to celebrate the artist's 90th birthday and 60th anniversary of his creative work. In 2022, the Melita Vovk Gallery in Bled hosted his exhibition The Light of Venice, and the Bled Calendar 2024 includes pen drawings from his Traces of Civilisation series, which he created between 1985 and 1990.