The EKO Triennial inhabits abandoned architecture and iconic locations in the city of Maribor, drawing attention to the importance of the historic building stock and the preservation of cultural heritage. With contemporary art, we enter spaces that demand our attention and re-present them to the public.
The venue of the EKO 9 Triennial is an abandoned modernist villa at Tyrševa ulica 19. Built as the first private sanatorium and family home of Dr Mirko Černič, it is known in the collective memory of Mariborians as the children’s polyclinic or the pulmonology ward of the health centre. Almost 100 years later, the former sanatorium remains in its original form and is one of the finest examples of modernist architecture in the city.
Join us and (re)visit the old sanatorium.
The sanatorium of Dr Černič, Tyrševa ulica 19, Maribor
Chief physician Dr Mirko Černič moved to Maribor in 1919 at the invitation of the General Hospital in Maribor to take over its surgical department. At the end of the 1920s, he decided to continue his career in private practice. He planned the construction of the first private sanatorium in the city and commissioned the most successful Slovenian construction company at the time, Jelenc & Šlajmer, to realise his idea.
The sanatorium was opened in 1930 in what was then Gornja Gosposka ulica (now Tyrševa ulica 19) in Maribor. On the ground floor of the villa, Dr Černič set up a sanatorium with modern equipment and guest doctors from Maribor, Ljubljana and Graz, with whom he tried to keep the more demanding patients from Maribor, who at the time still preferred to be treated in neighbouring Graz. There was a terrace on the roof for “air and sun baths”, patients could use the beautiful park surrounding the building, while the first floor was intended as a residence for Dr Černič and his family. The operation of Černič’s private sanatorium was interrupted and discontinued during the Second World War. After the war, the sanatorium was nationalised and in 1949 it was converted into a clinic for the treatment of tuberculosis, which became part of the Maribor Health Centre in the 1950s. Today, the villa is owned by the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Maribor and has been awaiting new contents and new residents for a decade.
Read more about the building history of the old sanatorium in the article by art historian Dr Eva Sapač, Conservation Advisor at the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia (IPCHS).
You can find out more about the interesting life of Dr Mirko Černič in the article by ethnologist and librarian Dr Jerneja Ferlež in the scientific monograph Osebnosti slovenske medicine 2020 (in Slovenian only).
Browse through the promotional brochure for the opening of the sanatorium in 1930 (in Slovenian only) and read the article by Jasmina Kogovšek entitled Dr Mirko Černič and the 90th anniversary of the sanatorium in Maribor. Archivalia of the month (May 2020), Archives of the Republic of Slovenia. (in Slovenian only) URL: https://www.gov.si/novice/2020-05-01-dr-mirko-cernic-in-90-obletnica-odprtja-mariborskega-sanatorija/
