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The Emblems of the Land of Rama exhibition by academic sculptor Petar Dolić opens at the Josip Račić Studio of the Modern Gallery
The 24th October saw the opening of the Emblems of the Land of Rama exhibition by academic painter Petar Dolić at the Josip Račić Studio of the Modern Gallery. The guests were welcomed and greeted on behalf of the Modern Gallery by Lana Šetka, Head of Marketing and Public Relations, who thanked the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and the City Office for Culture of the City of Zagreb for their financial support for the exhibition. The small-scale bronze sculptures exhibited and their sculptor were presented by Nevenka Šarčević, curator of the exhibition and author of the introduction to the catalogue accompanying the exhibition. In her address, Nevenka Šarčević stated: In terms of form and content, the exhibition is presenting the following groups: At the Photographer’s, From the Life of Rama and At the Lake, and is dedicated to Rama’s expatriates living and working in Germany. Rama’s expatriates are the epitome of the fate not only of Rama, but also of humanity, a fate which so often confirms its existence by motion, departures and returns. All who will want more than just a first impression and who will view the whole exhibition with close attention have been given a great opportunity to gain insight through these small sculptures into the way in which the local can be attributed the dimensions of the global, as well as into the way in which the universal is perceived in the individual. We’ll notice this, for example, in the figures centring on the motif of childhood, the lives of Rama’s boys and girls, mothers, or ‘ordinary people’, such as shepherds in whom we recognise the Good Shepherd from Christian iconography. More specifically, the ‘story of Rama’ is, in Dolić’s expression, also reflected in countless human destinies, spaces and communities.

Dolić’s sculptural works have been talked and written about more extensively lately, and with good reason. Dolić, naturally, prefers to express himself through his sculptures. The other day, he had a public monument, a statue of Vlaho Bukovac on the seafront in Cavtat, unveiled. Let me also add that, although this is his third solo exhibition this year, it’s thematically completely different from the previous ones. And continued: …it is significant that, with this series, Dolić has expressed an affirmative attitude to classical sculptural form, and that he has expressed the visual component of collective memory poetically, collective memory that makes no allusion to the literal and superficial, which is why this series of sculptures has been named Emblems of the Memory of Rama.

The exhibition was opened by Fr. Ivan Šarčević, a Rama-born theologian, professor, non-fictionist and essayist.
The exhibition of Petar Dolić’s sculptures closes on 10th November 2019.