NMMU ON TOUR
Blue Gazes: Seascapes in Croatian Visual Art from Plein Air Painting to Abstraction
Masterpieces from the Collection of the National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Opening: July 31, 2025, at 8 PM
Croatian Museum of Tourism, Park Angiolina 1, Opatija

Exhibition Curators: Tea Hatadi and Lorena Šimić
Exhibition Design: Lada Sega and Lorena Šimić

The Croatian Museum of Tourism is launching a new exhibition series in collaboration with Croatian museum institutions. The first in the series is Blue Horizons, featuring masterpieces from the collection of the National Museum of Modern Art in Zagreb. This exhibition presents a visual journey through portrayals of the open sea and coastline in Croatian painting, from the late 19th century to abstraction. The sea and its shoreline are explored as spaces of aesthetic inspiration, spiritual introspection, and historical change — from the plein-air fidelity to nature to abstract expressions of inner states.

The artworks highlight the color blue, delving into its symbolism, meaning, and visual power. Blue is considered elusive and untouchable, revealing itself at the edges of our world — in the most distant and profound spaces where sky and sea meet. In an era when natural beauty is increasingly threatened by mass tourism and environmental instability, Blue Horizons reminds us that artistic depictions of the sea are more than mere representations; they are mirrors of our responsibility toward the environment we inhabit.

The earliest portrayals of the sea in Croatian painting can be traced to artists such as Vlaho Bukovac and Menci Clement Crnčić, who approached the landscape through academic realism and plein air techniques. Not far from Opatija, in Novi Vinodolski, Menci Clement Crnčić painted the first marine scenes of Croatian modernism. With the turn of the 20th century, landscape painting became a key expression of national identity, and artists like Emanuel Vidović, Ljubo Babić, and Ignjat Job introduced emotional and expressive dimensions to these spaces. Postwar artists such as Edo Murtić, Ivo Dulčić, and Frano Baće interpreted the landscape through color, symbolism, and lyrical abstraction. In the second half of the 20th century, the landscape increasingly became a mental space and a bearer of personal memory, as seen in the works of Slavko Šohaj, Zlatan Vrkljan, Marta Ehrlich, and Dalibor Parać.

The exhibition showcases masterpieces from the collection of the National Museum of Modern Art, featuring some of the most prominent Croatian artists of the 20th and 21st centuries: Ljubo Babić, Frano Baće, Vlaho Bukovac, Menci Clement Crnčić, Ivo Dulčić, Marta Ehrlich, Ignjat Job, Mila Kumbatović, Gustav Likan (Haueise), Bane Milenković, Jerolim Miše, Omer Mujadžić, Edo Murtić, Dalibor Parać, Vilim Svečnjak, Slavko Šohaj, Đuro Tiljak, Emanuel Vidović, Zlatan Vrkljan, and Mladen Veža.

Exhibition on view until September 7, 2025
Croatian Museum of Tourism, Park Angiolina 1, Opatija
Opening hours: 9 AM – 1 PM and 5 PM – 9 PM
Closed on Mondays and public holidays
www.hrmt.hr

Images (From right to the left):
Menci Clement Crnčić, Calm Sea, 1906 / oil on canvas / 94.6 x 140.7 cm / inv. no. MG-441
Mila Kumbatović, Islet, 1955 / oil on canvas / 54 x 81 cm / inv. no. MG-2237
Ljubo Babić, Landscape, 1918 / oil on wood / 35 x 43 cm / with frame: 53 x 61 cm / inv. no. MG-950
Frano Baće, Fishermen in Kornati, 1951 / tempera on cardboard / 47 x 59 cm / inv. no. MG-2071
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb