Vladimir Kristl
Variation, 1958
oil on canvas
59.4 × 72.8 cm
MG-2579

Vladimir Kristl (1923–2004) was a painter, filmmaker, animator, illustrator, and writer, and one of the founding members of EXAT 51 (1951–1956), the group that programmatically advocated for geometric abstraction and the synthesis of art and design. In the early 1950s, Kristl emerged as one of the most rigorous proponents of orthogonal geometric abstraction in Croatia. His paintings from this period are characterised by strict compositional discipline, reduction of colour and structural clarity. By the late 1950s, however, he began destabilizing geometric order through the use of irregular grids and material experimentation. Kristl increasingly devoted himself to animated and experimental film, becoming one of the key figures in the Zagreb School of Animated Film. Later disputes with cultural institutions prompted him to relocate to West Germany, where he became a major force in avant-garde cinema. Across all media, his work consistently embodied a resistance to authority and aesthetic orthodoxy.
Variation belongs to Kristl’s late EXAT 51 phase, when strict geometric order begins to fracture. The painting is structured around a reduced, nearly achromatic tripartite division, yet the surface resists perfect regularity. Subtle deviations in the grid and deliberate irregularities in execution introduce tension into what initially appears as a rational system. Even amid the canvas’s apparent austerity, a sense of instability persists, with geometry rendered provisional rather than absolute.
In the context of the exhibition, Kristl represents the internal radicalization of EXAT 51’s abstraction: from constructive clarity toward material doubt and structural subversion. His work signals both the culmination and the dissolution of the 1950s geometric orthodoxy.

Text: Marta Radman, curator at the National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Marta Radman
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb