The National Museum of Modern Art presents the exhibition Linocut by Nevenka Arbanas at the Josip Račić Gallery, on view from 5 to 29 March. The exhibition is curated by Ivana Rončević Elezović, PhD, Museum Advisor at the National Museum of Modern Art. In the accompanying exhibition catalogue, Ivana Rončević Elezović writes, among other things: With the deliberately analogue tone of her latest exhibition title, Linocut, Arbanas foregrounds traditional printmaking techniques while engaging with a critical issue of contemporary life: the tension between human experience and the digital world. She emphasises the need for profoundly tangible, human encounters amid the relentless surge of virtualisation, evoking, in a sense, a contemporary Munchian scream in response to challenges such as the sudden rise of artificial intelligence. This body of work, and its presentation to the public, can also be read as a reflection on the dissonances of profound societal transitions that extend beyond technology, and as a quiet act of resistance by a modest exhibition con¬fronting the unstoppable. It is at once a cry, a note of nostalgia, a recollection, and a sober acknowledgment of the world’s current state.

The exhibition has been made possible with financial support from the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and the City Office for Culture and Civil Society of the City of Zagreb.

Nevenka Arbanas was born in 1950 in Batina, Baranja, and is both a painter and a printmaker. She obtained a degree in printmaking from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1975, in the class of Professor Albert Kinert and earned her master’s degree in graphic arts in 1977 (A. Kinert). She further honed her skills in printmaking at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 in Paris (1986) and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, studying with L. Čepelak (1988). Arbanas works in both monochrome and colour compositions. By employing a variety of mixed-media techniques, she achieves painterly effects through graphic methods. Her work is frequently noted for blurring the boundaries between printmaking and painting, yet her print sheets remain, to the fullest extent possible, true to the medium of printmaking. She has exhibited in over 200 group shows and 60 solo exhibitions, as well as numerous international printmaking exhibitions, and has been selected for world biennials and triennials as a representative of Croatian graphic art. Arbanas has published several graphic portfolios and bibliographic works, including the books Graphic Techniques (1999) and Intaglio Printmaking Techniques (2015). Her works are held in many museums, galleries, and private collections in Croatia and abroad. An illustrated monograph, Nevenka Arbanas, produced in collaboration with Luko Paljetak, was published by the National and University Library in Zagreb as part of the Prizma series (editor: B. Biškupić). In 1994, she turned her focus to ceramics, producing a glazed ceramic Stations of the Cross with a crucifix, a choir screen adorned with figures of saints, and scenes from the life of St Joseph for the Church of St Joseph the Worker in Ostrošinci (Parish of Podgorač). The following year, she created a terracotta Stations of the Cross for the Chapel of St Michael in Zagreb. She taught at the School of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb until 2000, after which she joined the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. From 2012 until her retirement in 2017, she held the position of full tenured professor. In 2017, she earned the academic degree of Doctor of Arts in the field of fine arts, based on her artistic achievements in the project and accompanying written work Leaves / Creating Associations in the Viewer of a Graphic Print. In 2018, the Klovićevi Dvori Gallery in Zagreb hosted a major retrospective of her work (with catalogue texts written by Tonko Maroević and Luko Paljetak). She was awarded the ‘Vladimir Nazor’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018 and, in 2025, received the HDLU Lifetime Achievement Award for 2024, in recognition of her outstanding contri¬bution to the development of contemporary visual arts in Croatia.

Reproductions: Nevenka Arbanas – from left to right: (1) The Child Is Dying Out, 2025, colour linocut, 400 × 300 mm, paper; (2) The Guest, 2025, colour linocut, 400 × 300 mm, paper; (3) You Are Gone, 2025, colour linocut, 400 × 300 mm, paper; (4) Little Flame, 2025, colour linocut, 400 × 300 mm, paper. / Photo: Josip Strmečki, Igor Konjušak