Drago Julius Prelog was born on 4 November 1939 in Celje, Slovenia and grew up in Upper Styria. He attended the Art school in Graz and started studying with Albert Paris Gütersloh at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1958. In his work he dealt with lines, strokes and characters in a variety of ways.
Prelog became known for his self-developed design technique, the so-called “prrelography. ” Prelography is a reproduction technique that can be used primarily in the field of printing. With the help of punched templates, over which stiff acrylic paint is drawn with long spatulas, a tactile, scaly-like pattern is created. As early as 1967, Drago Julius Prelog received the Theodor-Körner-Stiftung’s promotional prize and a prize from the Neue Galerie Graz in 1969. From 1969 to 1979 he was a lecturer in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. From 1974 to 1997 he was also a lecturer in “Writing and Writing Design” at the Academy. In 1968 he participated in the Venice Biennale, got the Art Prize of the State of Styria and in 1972 a large retrospective at the Landesmuseum Joanneum (now Universalmuseum Joanneum).
In 1977, Prelog painted his first work in the famous series of “Umlaufbilder”, in which he approached the horizontal canvas, his painting ground, from all four sides, creating abstract images that do not succumb to a classical compositional concept. In 1982 he exhibited a major retrospective of his work at the Künstlerhaus Salzburg. Since then several hundred exhibitions in Austria and abroad have followed.
