Raul Goldoni
(1919 – 1983)
Core VII, 1967
glass
21x14x12cm
MG-2823
Raul Goldoni was a sculptor by vocation despite having obtained a degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1942, in the class of Prof. Marino Tartaglia, after which he continued his studies at the Academy in Rome. During World War II, he participated in the partisan movement. After the war, among other things, he worked as a teacher of glassmaking at the Glass School and a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, and he also worked at the glass factory in Rogaška Slatina as the head of design. In addition, he is one of the founders of the Forum Gallery in Zagreb.
Until the early 1960s, he created paintings in keeping with Cézanne’s constructivist works and Fauvism. After having definitively abandoned painting, he devoted himself fully to sculpture and developed a special form of figuration approaching organic forms, predominantly using glass and bronze. In collaboration with glass workshops, such as those in Murano, he shaped unique utilitarian objects, sculptural free forms and compositions, and glass multiples using various techniques. In this sense, he was one of the pioneers of glass art in the world. Often, his abstract forms allude to crystallized animal and human shapes. One such form is the museum sculpture Core VII from 1967, which reflects Goldoni’s interest in the purity and permanence of form and the refined relationship between light and shadow. By carefully treating the surface of the sculpture, he enables the redirection of the gaze deep through the glass and its connection to the surrounding space.
Later, Goldoni turned to other materials, including bronze, increasingly contemplating death, and he created bronze human and animal heads as memorials, bearing witness to the inevitability of transience.
He also wrote about issues related to art education.
Text: Dajana Vlaisavljević, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb