Đuro Tiljak
(1895-1965)
Spring Canopies, s. a.
gouache, tempera on paper
19×25.8 cm
MG-2988

Đuro Tiljak (1895-1965) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in Moscow under Wassily Kandinsky whose classes he attended in 1919, and in Paris. Besides his work as a critic, editor, school teacher and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, his exhibition-related activities are also important, particularly those related to the Spring Salon during the 1920s and the Earth Association of Artists. He was a member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts. Tiljak’s rounded painting oeuvre covers a whole array of styles, ranging from his early refined watercolours through the Magical Realism he embraced in the 1930s to the Poetic Realism featured in his landscapes and dramatic figurations of scenes of war, after all of which he returned to watercolours verging on Abstraction.
Đuro Tiljak’s Spring Canopies testify to his mastery of tonal shading, which is particularly evident in his watercolours. Featuring shades of greens, blues and browns, Tiljak’s unusual choice of motif of a close-up view through a dense canopy, which almost obscures the view of the surroundings, places the scene somewhere between Abstract and Figurative Art.

Text: Ivana Rončević Elezović, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Ana Janković
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb