Being a self-taught artist, Jože Tisnikar created an exceptional opus of drawings, paintings and graphics. He was a painter of transience and a witness to the last moments of human existence. He once said of his work: "It seems to me that I saw many things which I, in reality, had not seen. That I travelled across a land where I had never been, that I lived both my own and other people’s lives. Were it the case that I had not had a previous life, then some of the knowledge and experiences of the dead passed into to me."
His self-taught artistic path was strongly influenced not only by his work as an autopsy assistant in the Slovenj Gradec hospital, where he worked until 1983, but also by poverty in his childhood. Besides the 20th anniversary of Tisnikar’s death, this year also marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of this man with a raven, as he became imprinted in Slovene consciousness. The raven, from whom he was inseparable, is one of his recurring motifs.