zoran mušič’s playful horses

To create a coin, this miniature piece of graphic design, a central image must first be selected. In his opus, painter Zoran Mušič (1909–2005) developed several substantive visual motifs both interesting and worth considering. There are several reasons why we selected for this purpose his Little Horses (Cavallini), which captivate the artist’s imagination and feature mainly in his graphics during the period 1947–1953.

The first reason supporting our choice is the fact that experts see Mušič’s graphic pieces from this period as central to his work. The second and perhaps more important reason is the intimate drawing and exceptional visual sensibility of the motif of his horses, which reflect the painter’s inner world better than any other.

Since the essence of an artist’s creations comes from his inner life, the inside should interest us more than the outside appearance. This is why it is easy to renounce the portrait – a common method of representation when it comes to the reverse sides of coins.

The visual image of horses on the reverse side moderately transcends into a bare visual image and is carried over to the obverse. The layout was designed to harmoniously intertwine with the motif into a whole, while typeface was selected both with due respect to tradition and a feel for contemporary trends.