Category: Discover-Archive

Goran Fruk, Untitled, 1989

Goran Fruk
Untitled, 1989
mixed media on canvas
250 x 179.5 cm
MG-6356

By creating a personal artistic environment based on the spiritual and intellectual querying of the world within and around him, in his Untitled abstract painting from 1989, Goran Fruk seems to evoke the penetration of light in the darkness. Questioning art and its possibilities, the artist uses extreme tones, the brightest white and the darkest black, to encourage the observers to examine their own minds and interpret the work independently.
Goran Fruk (1959-1993, Zagreb) was a multimedia artist, painter, poet and a passionate mountaineer, who entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1982, after having completed his studies in comparative literature and art history at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. At the Academy, he was quickly recognised as an extremely gifted painter and a striking phenomenon in Croatian visual arts in the 1980s. His creative oeuvre spans the period from 1986 to his sudden death in 1993. During his student days, he collaborated with colleagues from the Academy on staging various actions, music projects, happenings and performances that left a significant mark on the art scene of that period. Among them, the three performances titled Defenestration I, II, III, staged from 1986 to 1988, are considered Fruk’s most significant actions. As part of that project, together with his colleagues from the Academy, he organised a happening in three acts whereby they “ejected” paintings and civilisational waste through the window of his family home and his studio onto public ground below. Fruk’s maturation as a painter led him to push the boundaries of the treatment of the painting surface and to abolish the frame of the painting itself. In a very short creative period, he achieved an intriguing body of work and left an indelible mark on the Croatian art scene with his artistic activity.

Text: Lorena Šimić, trainee curator of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Damir Sokić, 15 x 25 W 60 Metres of Electrical Installation, 1979

Damir Sokić
(1952)
15 x 25 W 60 Metres of Electrical Installation, 1979
lightbulbs, insulated wire, dimensions variable
l=600 cm
MG-6744

In 1977, Damir Sokić obtained a degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in the class of Prof. Nikola Reiser. From 1977 to 1979, he worked as an associate in Ljubo Ivančić’s and Nikola Reiser’s Master Workshop. From 1986 to 1993 he lived and worked in New York. Between 1999 and 2019, he worked as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. He writes about art. He has been exhibiting paintings, sculptures, objects and installations continuously since 1976. He staged over forty solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions and projects.
Geometric space, paintings and installations with connotations of Arte Povera are Sokić’s artistic preoccupation, which he uses to create his artistic reality. He constructs objects and lumino-kinetic installations and reinterprets the avant-garde with references to Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism.
With its minimalist form, the post-avant-garde light installation made of 60 metres of electrical wire with fifteen 25 W incandescent bulbs distributed on the floor, suggests an autonomous site-specific lumino environment that critically examines the medium of sculpture in the correlations of matter and idea.

Text: Tatijana Gareljić, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Julije Knifer, Composition III, 1960

Julije Knifer
Composition III, 1960
oil on canvas
66.5 x 97 cm
MG-2577

The meander is the predominant motif in the oeuvre of Julije Knifer (1924 – 2004), one of Croatia’s most important 20th century painters. Knifer’s reductive abstraction is characterised by a selection of one single motif and his systematic treatment of it. Firmly fixed by the painting frame and painted in equally important black and white surfaces, the meander had been Knifer’s only theme since 1959. He adopted the term meander ideated by I. Zidić. Knifer’s entire oeuvre is defined by the consistency of repetition of the rhythm of the meander and the continuity of space and time. Pronounced absurdity, paradox and irony brought Knifer closer to the ideas of the Gorgona Group, of which he was a founding member (1959). In 1961 he participated in the first exhibition of the New Tendencies. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1956 (Đ. Tiljak) and completed his postgraduate studies under the mentorship of A. Mejzdić. His strict and repetitive non-psychological Self-portraits (1949-1952) and drawings of Stenjevec (1952) – behind the motif of which the structure of the meander is observable – are the prototypes of his anti-painting, which is what he calls the meander in the 1960s in his diary-like Records. Composition III (1960) is not yet titled Meandar, but its visuality and free association imply it. We see the sublimation of the motif as the ultimate absolute of flat white and the ultimate linear absolute of black; like the positive and negative of motif marking of equal value. In Knifer’s system of uniform, monotonous rhythm, we recognise influences ranging from the philosophy of Existentialism and Absurdism, to Malevich and Cézanne (Z. Maković). One of Knifer’s favourite Renaissance artists – which is no coincidence – was Piero della Francesca. By having increased the dimensions of the meander, he also designed ambient installations (Tübingen, 1975). Since the 1970s, he lived and exhibited in Germany and France, and in 2002 he received the “Vladimir Nazor” Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also a passionate football fan.

Text: Željko Marciuš, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Ivan Lesiak, Massacre of the Innocents, 1972

Ivan Lesiak
Massacre of the Innocents, 1972
iron (relief)
100 x 200 cm
MG-4240

Zagreb student Ivan Lesiak (1929 – 2008) is particularly known for his figurative reliefs in metal, made in the spirit of poetic Symbolism, Surrealism and fantasy and a direct and coarse expressive style. A significant moment in his artistic biography is his membership in the Biafra Group (1970 – 1978), which problematised the issues of contemporary humanism in its cultural and social context, but also the relationship with contemporary visual art trends, especially Abstract art, advocating engagement and expressive figuration marked by naturalism and distortions. The group’s usual strategy was to organise exhibitions and actions in the streets and public spaces in Croatia and abroad. Lesiak’s drawings and print sheets, critically intoned towards the consumer society and contemporary civilisation, are executed in keeping with this strategy.
Lesiak made the metal relief Massacre of the Innocents in 1976, which is also characterised by the synthesis of the artist’s earlier minimalist poetic Symbolism with a rougher texture and the particularly harsh engaged messages of his ‘Biafra’ years, which were becoming increasingly obvious and dominant in Lesiak’s work. The gruesomeness of the scene, appearing like some eerie satellite image, combines the typical visuality of modern technologies with deliberate connotations to archaic design, just as the horrific theme of the scene evokes associations to the suffering of the innocents in all (historical and contemporary) injustices and wars, but also the biblical account of Herod’s slaughter of innocent children. Accordingly, Lesiak’s universal message is balanced on a formal and substantive level.

Text: dr.sc. Ivana Rončević Elezović, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić

Belizar Bahorić, Split Time,1973

Belizar Bahorić
(1920 - 2002)
Split Time, 1973
bronze
47 x 20 x 47cm
MG-3315

Belizar Bahorić expressed an interest in art as a student at the School of Crafts in Zagreb, which was then headed by the academic sculptor Vojta Braniš, who revived and reformed the school curriculum in the spirit of European trends. In 1940, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb to study sculpture, which he was forced to abandon after the war started, having just completed his first year. He actively participated in the National Liberation Struggle, and he also spent some time in captivity. After the war, he continued to study sculpture and graduated in 1950 in the class of Antun Augustinčić. During the 1950s, under Augustinčić’s influence, his sculptures and reliefs were characterised by figuration and realistic expression, especially the scenes from Ivan Goran Kovačić’s poem The Pit, in which he conveyed the tragedy of war. Deeply moved by the tragic experiences, he also drew small-scale portraits of fighters, landscapes and images of wartime devastation. Like most Croatian artists, in the 1960s he became interested in abstract forms, emphasising the construction and rhythm of the body in space. He occasionally gave associative meanings to abstract forms, for example in the cycle Erotic Games, created from 1978 – 1980. He worked as a teacher at the School of Arts and Design. He created a number of public monuments, and also worked as a printmaker and jewellery designer.
The museum sculpture Split Time from 1973 belongs to Bahorić’s period of keen interest in abstract-associative forms. The strict form of the circle with eroded edges and the disturbing crack that penetrates to the very core of the event opens up numerous existential questions that are difficult or even impossible to answer.

Text: Dajana Vlaisavljević, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Hrvoje Šercar, Danse Macabre, 1985

Hrvoje Šercar
Danse Macabre, 1985
India ink on paper
27x61 cm
MG-7419

In the culture and art of the Western Middle Ages, the so-called Danse Macabre is known as an allegorical genre that conveyed the omnipresence of death. Artistic representations of this genre most often depicted representatives of all social classes, who, accompanied by death – personified as a human skeleton – move in a procession towards their grave. The Pope, king, queen, labourer and child are the most represented figures in the scenes of the dance of death. Over time, the scene expanded to include other representatives of society, such as in Šercar’s drawing in which we recognise a drunkard, an abbess and a friar. The best-known depiction of the Danse Macabre in Croatia was painted in 1474 by Vincent of Kastav, in the Church of St. Mary in Beram. What characterizes it is not only the iconography and colour, but also the composition, which had to be adapted to the architecture of the church and was, therefore, elongated horizontally. Although free to choose his manner of representation, Šercar also used the longitudinal composition in his drawing. A longitudinally composed image is obviously close to modern man: it reminds him of the passage of time and the media, such as film or comic books.
The association to contemporary media is not accidental in the case of Hrvoje Šercar (1936 – 2014). Specifically, in 1967, together with Tomislav Gotovac, a celebrated Croatian film artist, and Ivo Lukas, he was one of the performers of the happening “Happ naš” in Zagreb. This peculiar artist was an autodidact. After having abandoned, just before graduation, the study of law in Zagreb, he devoted himself to art. He started working as an illustrator in one of the best known and largest publishing houses in Yugoslavia (Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography), so his inclination towards drawing and fantasy, as well as his aversion to colour, seems to have come naturally in Šercar’s artistic work.

Text: Klaudio Štefančić, senior curator of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Đurđica Zanoški Gudlin Lady, 1977

Đurđica Zanoški Gudlin
Lady, 1977
polyester, paint
158.5 x 29 x 48 cm
MG-3988

Đurđica Zanoški Gudlin’s polyester Lady from 1977 is touchingly sad and alone. The old lady is clearly lost in the midst of contemporary society and its drama. The life-size figure performing a mundane spontaneous gesture is clearly wasting away in a grotesque reality to which she does not really belong. As a critical commentary of the time and the world in which she lives, the artist accentuates the human figure exhausted to the point of paradox. In the body of the Lady that is quite obviously withering away, Đurđica Zanoški Gudlin epitomises the criticism and vehement expressivity of the Biafra Art Group, from whose last exhibition in 1978 the sculpture was acquired for the NMMU collection.
In 1975, Đurđica Zanoški Gudlin (Prosenik, 1950) obtained a degree in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in the class of Valerije Michieli, and a year earlier she joined the Biafra Group of artists who worked in the style of New Figuration and opposed all existing visual, cultural and social conventions. The sculptors Stjepan Gračan, Branko Bunić and Ratko Petrić came together spontaneously in 1970, and appropriated the name Biafra, as a symbol of war and famine in that African country, from the abandoned and devastated wing of the student dormitory in the centre of Zagreb where they lived, worked and exhibited as squatters. Until the group disbanded in 1978, Biafra held 15 group exhibitions, and they were later joined by Đurđica Zanoški Gudlin, as well as S. Jančić, I. Lesiak, V. Jakelić, R. Janjić Jobo, Z. Kauzlarić Atač, R. Labaš and E. R. Tanay. In addition to polyester, Đurđica Zanoški Gudlin also modells sculptures in wood and terracotta, and she makes jewellery.

Text: Lada Bošnjak Velagić, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Branko Vlahović, Sculpture, 1976

Branko Vlahović
(1924 – 1979)
Sculpture, 1976
stainless steel
56 x 46 x 25 cm
MG-3982

Branko Vlahović graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (V. Radauš) in 1951 and completed his post-graduate studies under F. Kršinić in 1953. That same year he went on a three-month study trip to Paris. Since 1955, he worked as a visual culture teacher in a school in Zagreb and then in Karlovac.
He is one of the most important representatives of minimalist sculpture in Croatia. Vlahović’s sculpture from the 1960s is based on the idea of modules and the construction of component parts. In a conscious departure from traditional modes of representation or hierarchy, he quickly removed the base of the sculpture. In his early works he used the pliancy and texture of plaster to create solid forms, while his later works relied on industrial aesthetics based on materials such as black sheet metal and polished chrome. Drawings are also an important aspect of Vlahović’s work and are consistently created alongside his sculptures. Their structural, hard edges resemble technical drawings or production plans, and complement the understanding of the sculptor’s thinking. He created the public monuments Icarus in Zagreb (1960) and the Nymph in Karlovac (1964).
This work, simply titled Sculpture, is made from polished silver material, and like many of his works, has a solid composition and no base. The minimally elaborated geometric shapes are depersonalised and exact.

Text: Tatijana Gareljić, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Frano Šimunović, Boundary Walls in Rocky Terrain II, 1958

Frano Šimunović
Boundary Walls in Rocky Terrain II, 1958
oil on canvas
67.5 x 131.5 cm
MG-2298

Frano Šimunović (1908-1995) is a classic of pre-WWII Modern art and Gestural Painting of High Modernism. He was the son of writer Dinko Šimunović (1873-1933). In the earlier stages of his career (i.e., 1932-1946), he was extremely socially and critically engaged (e.g., his paintings The “Sloboda” Inn, 1936; A Circus, 1941). He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Zagreb until 1934 (under Lj. Babić and J. Kljaković). In the mid-1930s, he continued his studies in Madrid, where he made copies of both F. Goya’s and D. Velasquez’s work. Šimunović used to wander around the suburbs of Madrid making drawings, which deepened his social and expressive affinities. He drew scenes from Madrid’s outskirts, cripples and beggars – those at the bottom of the social ladder – underscoring the cruel irony, drama and grotesqueness of life. Šimunović exhibited his works from Spain at his first solo exhibition in Zagreb in 1935. He also painted vedutas of the outskirts of Zagreb and landscapes of the region of Dalmatinska Zagora (Dalmatian Hinterland) in intense colourways under the influence of Vincent van Gogh. During WWII, he drew and painted not only refugees and concentration camps, but also circus scenes inspired by Francisco Goya. After WWII, he painted mythical and rugged landscapes of the region of Dalmatian Hinterland: stone fences, boundary walls, piles of stone, polarised between a dark and earthy palette of colours on the one hand, and flickers and glimmers of white on the other. He became permanently preoccupied with this motif. In Šimunović’s Boundary Walls in Rocky Terrain II (1958), the terrestrial landscape is bounded by stone dividers and balances between a realistic three-dimensional motif and its transformation into an aerial visual two-dimensional representation. Materiality and organic expressivity spring from the pictorial sublimate. With this early work, Šimunović already anticipates the projections that will be freed from the descriptive almost completely (Abandoning the Darkness, 1977) and transformed, by the dispersion of light, into a cosmic landscape, nearing Gestural and Organic Abstraction. Šimunović also created illustrations (e.g., for a collection of fairy tales by the Grimm brothers, and D. Šimunović’s short stories). In 1992, he donated a part of his and his wife and sculptor Ksenija Kantoci’s oeuvre to Modern Gallery (today, the National Museum of Modern Art). He became a member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1963, and received the 1972 Vladimir Nazor Lifetime Achievement Award.

Text: Željko Marciuš, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Ivan Lesiak, An Ascetic, 1963

Ivan Lesiak
An Ascetic, 1963
metal / embossing (relief)
80 x 164
MG-2628

Zagreb student Ivan Lesiak (1929 – 2008) is particularly known for his figurative reliefs in metal, made in the spirit of poetic Symbolism, Surrealism and fantasy and a direct and coarse expressive style. A significant moment in his artistic biography is his membership in the Biafra Group (1970 – 1978), which problematised the issues of contemporary humanism in its cultural and social context, but also the relationship with contemporary visual art trends, especially Abstract art, advocating engagement and expressive figuration marked by naturalism and distortions. The group’s usual strategy was to organise exhibitions and actions in the streets and public spaces in Croatia and abroad. Lesiak’s drawings and print sheets, critically intoned towards the consumer society and contemporary civilisation, are executed in keeping with this strategy.
Lesiak’s An Ascetic from 1963, created in the period preceding Biafra, is an example of the refined minimalism of the artist’s poetic Symbolism. With carefully selected artistic means and a refined and emphatically symmetrical, static composition, Lesiak conveys a powerful allegory of an upright ascetic male figure, a protagonist in a destitute, contemplative environment.

Text: Ivana Rončević Elezović, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

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