The Museum of Post and Telecommunications in Polhov Gradec is hosting a temporary exhibition entitled Victory! 80 Years of the First Slovenian Stamps for the Slovenian Littoral and Istria, which presents for the first time some of the valuable material created by architect Miroslav Oražem. In 2022, the museum acquired his unique collection of drafts and sketches of postage stamps, which represents the entire opus of his proposals for the first Slovenian stamps issued after 1945 in western Slovenia.

After the end of World War II, the Yugoslav authorities in Zone B initially used overprinted Italian stamps, but then began to prepare their own issues. In May 1945, the task of designing them was entrusted to Miroslav Oražem, who sought motifs for the stamps in Primorska and Istria. On the 80th anniversary of their issue, the exhibition offers a glimpse into the process of creating these early Slovenian stamps and into a time of significant political and cultural changes.

Oražem, a student of Plečnik and briefly a collaborator of Le Corbusier, worked in many artistic genres: as an illustrator, designer, sculptor, painter, and graphic artist. That is why we are preparing the exhibition in collaboration with the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO), where we also highlight his broader creativity and the significance of his work for Slovenian visual heritage.

The central part of the exhibition is dedicated to the designs for the first Slovenian stamps in the Primorska region. Alongside the exhibition, we are also publishing a catalog of all philatelic material related to Miroslav Oražem, which is kept at the Technical Museum of Slovenia.

The exhibition will be open until November 22, 2026.