Smrekar completed several drawings for the Osa (The Wasp) newspaper while living in Vienna. He himself declared on several occasions that he did these drawings extremely reluctantly because the work severely limited his creativity, in that the content was dictated by the client. Osa was the newspaper which the liberal-leaning National Progressive Party had incorporated into its political campaign, which was very sharply set against its political opponents on the Catholic or “clerical” side. The satire was so sharp that it sometimes overstepped the boundaries of good taste, which also affected the fates of the artists involved, although not so drastically. For example: as a result of his satires in Osa, Maksim Gaspari did not receive a scholarship from the Provincial Committee for Carniola to study in Munich, while on the other hand even after 1906 he continued to be, like Smrekar, a regular contributor to the clearly catholic-oriented newspaper Dom in svet (Home and World).
The Wasp Magazine
