Josip Račić, A Lady in Black, 1907

Josip Račić
A Lady in Black, 1907
oil on canvas
96.3 x 78.7 cm
MG-746

After having studied in Zagreb Josip Račić (1885–1908) moved to Vienna in 1904, and then to Munich where he attended Anton Ažbe’s school of painting. He also spent time in Berlin in 1905. In the fall that same year, he enrolled in the drawing school at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich where he studied with Johann and Ludwig Herterich and Hugo von Habermann. In Munich, he socialized with Vladimir Becić, Miroslav Kraljević and Oskar Herman, and they became known as Die Kroatische Schule within the Academy. He spent the last year of his life, 1908, in Paris, where he created a series of successful works in the oil and watercolour techniques with depictions of Parisian vedutas and scenes from urban life with subtle hints of modernism.
The seated figure of a woman dressed in black, with a black scarf and a white collar, is depicted in three-quarter profile in a vertical format, using a dark colour range. Her head is slightly tilted back towards the left half of the picture, her right arm is bent at the elbow and rests on her side, while the left is laid casually on her lap, holding a rolled up grey napkin. This is a skilful and convincing case of tonal painting, as taught at the Academy in Munich, with pronounced soft modulations, typical of Račić. Although traditional in execution and conception, with its superior quality and uncanny psychological characterisation, it occupies a prominent place in Račić’s oeuvre and Croatian painting in general.

Text: Ivana Rončević Elezović, museum counselor at the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern art, Zagreb, 2023
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern art, Zagreb, 2023

Vladimir Becić, Female Nude With a Newspaper (In the Studio), 1907

VLADIMIR BECIĆ (1886-1954)
Female Nude with a Newspaper (In the Studio), 1907
oil on canvas
100 x 85 cm
MG-850

Vladimir Becić (1886–1954) attended Menci Clement Crnčić’s and Bela Čikoš Sesija’s private painting school in Zagreb. Like Miroslav Kraljević, he also dropped out of law school and in 1905 went to Munich to study painting. Once there, among other things, he enrolled in the painting course of Hugo von Habermann, which was also attended, between 1905 and 1910, by Račić, Kraljević and Herman (the Munich Circle). In 1909, he moved to Paris to study at the Académie da la Grande Chaumière. During his long life, he lived in Zagreb, Osijek, Belgrade, Bitola and Blažuj near Sarajevo, where he also set up a studio. He participated in World War I as a war correspondent and painter for the L’Illustration weekly from the Macedonian Front.

Becić’s painting style ranged from the Munich Realism, Expressionism and Cézanneism, through Magical to Colourist Realism.

In the painting Female Nude with a Newspaper (In the Studio) from 1907, he gives a distinctly modern touch to the theme of a model in the studio by introducing the motif of a broadsheet newspaper in the centre of the right half of the painting. The act of reading the newspaper, as a product of modern civilisation, thus imposes itself as an alternative, equally valuable topic to the one cited in the title of the work itself. Situated in the studio interior, the female nude, the reflection of whose head can be seen in the background mirror, and the dog curled up at her feet, together with the newspaper motif, form the central rectangle of the composition. Painted with long, visible brush strokes, in a dark gamut of colours, the shapes have a clear geometricity, typical of Becić, connecting him to Cézanneism of the “Munich Circle”.

Text: Ivana Rončević Elezović, museum consultant © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb 2022.

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