In recent months, we have been faced with restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the severe earthquake that struck Zagreb on 22 March. Like many buildings in Zagreb’s city centre, the building of the National Museum of Modern Art, the Vranyczany Palace, was also damaged by the earthquake. After the structure of the building was inspected by chartered structural engineers and the building was deemed structurally safe, and once minor adjustments have been made and public health protection standards have been adopted and put in place, we are opening the museum with Vatroslav Kuliš, A Critical Retrospective 1974-2020.

Authored by art critic Milan Bešlić, in the twelve exhibition halls on the first floor of the palace the exhibition is presenting more than one hundred large- and small-format paintings and objects which Kuliš has created since 1974.

About his retrospective at the National Museum of Modern Art, Vatroslav Kuliš stated: For me, the space of the National Museum of Modern Art is an emotionally most layered space. It was sometime at the beginning of my education at the School of Applied Arts and Design that I first visited the museum. At the time, the National Museum of Modern Art was a temple of painting for me, a sacred space. It was with admiration and piety that I viewed the work of Račić, Kraljević, Motika, Dulčić… I dreamed of exhibiting the supreme achievements of my youthful rapture one day in this space.

With Milan Bešlić authoring the foreword, Branko Franceschi the introduction and Sanja Bachrach Krištofić the graphic design, the exhibition catalogue will be presented to the public as soon as epidemic measures will allow.

Photo: Goran Vranić and National Museum o0f Modern Art Photographic Archive©National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb