The exhibition Bridges of Promise at the Striegl City Gallery in Sisak https://galerija-striegl.hr/, curated by NMMU museum advisor Lada Bošnjak Velagić, traces the development of Croatian modernity from the 19th century to the present day through some twenty diverse painterly, drawn and graphic interpretations of its title theme. Presented as part of the “NMMU On Tour” series, the exhibition showcases the richness of the Museum’s Collection, linking it, through works by Slavo Striegl and Ivica Mareković, to the holdings of the Striegl City Gallery, where the exhibition is being hosted.
From Franz Jaschke’s classicist topographical veduta gouache depicting our landscapes in the early 19th century to the contemporary painterly impressions of Matko Vekić and Davorin Radić, the exhibition highlights the bridge as a motif of the spirit reaching across – a paradigm for striving towards an unknown shore, change, creative renewal and breaking with convention.
On the way to the far shore, bridges always hold out the promise of something new, other and different. Through a selection of around twenty works by leading Croatian painters and printmakers, arranged chronologically from the 19th century to the present, the exhibition presents the bridge as a universal symbol of the spirit’s passage across, a singular place that can paradoxically signify both meeting and parting, salvation and ruin. As in literature, film and music, from Franz Kafka and Ivo Andrić to David Lean, Clint Eastwood and Simon and Garfunkel, bridges continue, even in everyday phraseology, to carry the symbolism of a fragile connection between past and future: a link capable of joining as much as dividing, a crossing that can protect us from what we flee while denying us what we aspire to. (...) – Lada Bošnjak Velagić, from the foreword to the accompanying catalogue
Artists: Vladimir Becić, Ivo Dulčić, Marijan Detoni, Franz Jaschke, Ivo Kalina, Sonja Kovačić – Tajčević, Mihovil Krušlin, Ivica Mareković, Edo Murtić, Vjekoslav Parać, Oton Postružnik, Josip Račić, Davorin Radić, Ivo Režek, Slava Raškaj, Slavko Striegl, Đuro Tiljak, Marijan Trepše, Milivoj Uzelac, Matko Vekić, Emanuel Vidović
More detailed information about all the works on display is available via the barcodes on the museum labels, while around thirty paintings, sculptures and medals from the NMMU Collection that could not be exhibited due to conservation and spatial constraints are presented by way of a photographic projection.

Translated by Robertina Tomić

Photo Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb