Tag: 1961.

Ordan Petlevski, Vegetation, 1961

Ordan Petlevski
(1930 – 1997)
Vegetation, 1961
oil on canvas
131x121cm
MG-2567

Ordan Petlevski is one of the most important Croatian post-WWII artists in general. He was born in Prilep in Macedonia, and after finishing secondary school he moved to Zagreb to attend the Academy. In 1955, he graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts, which operated for a relatively short time (1949-1955). The study at the Academy was characterised by individual work in workshops and creative experimentation as a legacy of the Bauhaus, which probably influenced the young painter in a conceptual sense. In the period from 1955 to 1960, he worked as an associate in Krsto Hegedušić’s Master Workshop. In 1959, he won the grand prize at the First Paris Youth Biennale. For a while, he painted under the influence of Cubism, gradually moving away from figuration and approaching Abstract art and Surrealism. He is particularly close to nature, so he finds his expression in organic forms in the sense of Organic Abstraction, often preoccupied with considerations of the concepts of “beautiful” and existential.
The museum painting Vegetation from 1961, belongs to an earlier period when Petlevski was finding his own style and was preoccupied by the destroyed world of biological forms similar to the forms visible through a microscope. His palette in this period predominantly features earthy hues ranging from light brown to almost black brown tones of the decaying, disappearing vegetative world, the ultimate consequence of which is finality, death.

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

Oton Postružnik, Composition I, 1961

Oton Postružnik
Composition I, 1961
oil on canvas
130.5 x 162.5 cm
MG-6971

Oton Postružnik (1900 – 1978) was a socially and critically engaged painter (printmaker and sculptor) in the pre-WWII period and one of the most prominent representatives of Lyrical Abstraction in the post-war period. In 1915 he enrolled in painter Ljubo Babić’s private art school. In 1917 he took part in anti-Hungary protests, when he gave a fiery speech, which resulted in being cautioned by the authorities. In 1920 he left the Advanced School of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb and moved to Prague to study (under painter V. Bukovac). After he returned from Prague, he continued his studies at the newly founded Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he graduated under Lj. Babić (1924). Postružnik was one of the first students to work in ceramics under H. Juhn. In the same year, he opened a private painting school together with painter I. Tabaković, with whom he exhibited The Grotesques series of drawings akin to the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) art movement at the Ullrich Salon. This series of drawings heralded the critical and social agenda of the Earth Association of Artists (1929-1935), which he was a founding member of. He studied in Paris in 1925 and 1926 (under A. Lhote and M. Kisling), which may have influenced his monumental painting (Klek Mountain, 1929). He often spent time in Dalmatia, where he developed a distinctive colourism based on bright and open colours, and a powerful and free style. In the 1950s he started reducing his figural templates to flat signs, pure colours and compositional glows of light. The painting Composition I (1961) is a paradigmatic visualisation for understanding Postružnik’s reduction and abstraction of the landscape and the motif to floating natural forms at the intersections and correlations between Organic and Lyrical Abstraction and softened Art Informel. It is material lyricism of moderate colouring and organic forms based on counterpoints between the biomorphically reduced floating anti-gravitational saturated and peculiar relief matrix and a foundation of thinned flat surface interspersed with spots, dots and variable building traces that improvise and repeat the central motif in reduced form. Postružnik taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb between 1958 and 1970, and received the Vladimir Nazor Lifetime Achievement Award in 1964.

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

Šime Perić, Composition IV, 1961

Šime Perić
(1920-2019)
Composition IV, 1961
oil on hardboard, 170x122 cm
170 x 122 cm
MG-4500

Šime Perić (1920-2019) was a figurative-abstract fantasist and a classic of Croatian painting. During the 1950s, his works developed from impressionistic colouristic figuration into gesture- and Tachisme-based abstraction. After his darkish Art Informel period during the 1960s, in the 1970s he produced paintings of refined yet colouristically intense expression. He started abandoning quadrangular canvases and sometimes painted tondos, whose circular form evokes the archetypal image of an island. In the 1980s he began sculpting as well, and successfully so. In 1949 he spent a semester studying fresco painting in Paris at the National School of Fine Arts, which turned out to be of crucial importance for Perić’s painting and expanded his horizons intellectually. He graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade in 1952 and worked as an associate at painter Krsto Hegedušić’s master workshop until 1957. He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb between 1969 and 1984.
The motif of stain and its transformation into colouristic centrifugal and centripetal motion is one of the bedrocks of Perić’s oeuvre. His Composition IV painting from 1961 defines Art Informel in Croatia both chronologically and morphologically. The painting is executed by grading clusters of formless, magma-like matter. It lies at the crossroads of factuality, the physical materiality of painting and the feelings of restlessness and existential angst it expresses.
Šime Perić is the recipient of the 1989 Vladimir Nazor Lifetime Achievement Award given yearly by Croatia’s Ministry of Culture. In 2003 Perić’s monograph was authored by art historians Tonko Maroević and Mladenka Šolman. In 2007, the 12th leg of the White Road in the Dubrova Sculpture Park near the town of Labin in Istria was built based on Perić’s designs.

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

Stipe Sikirica, A Young Horse, 1961

Stipe Sikirica
A Young Horse, 1961
cast bronze
136 x 31 x 120 cm
MG-2758

Croatian sculptor Stipe Sikirica (1933) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he studied and later specialized under Vanja Radauš, eventually becoming a professor himself. He is one of the founders and professors of the Academy in Široki Brijeg. Sikirica is known for his elongated, stylized human figures and animalistic motifs, primarily horses. The choice of these themes is closely connected to the artist’s strong sense of his native Sinj region and the ethos of the Alka tradition. Sikirica is the author of numerous public monuments throughout Croatia.
Sikirica’s Young Horse from 1961, captivates with the impression of vitality and the strength of a young animal, shaped with the sculptor’s characteristic elongated, stylized forms, with the reared head and a calm, stable standing posture. The smooth purity and minimalism of the rounded sculptural shapes evoke a vision of horses from the Gothic world, reminiscent of Paolo Uccello’s paintings (1397-1475). The seemingly static and symmetrical composition vibrates with the dynamism of life forces, invoking archaic forms, operating according to universal and archetypal patterns.

Text: Ivana Rončević Elezović, museum consultant of 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

Eugen Feller, Yellow Surface III, 1961

Eugen Feller
Yellow Surface III, 1961
mixed media on canvas, 86 x 75 cm
MG-6989

Next to Ivo Gattin, Eugen Feller (1942) is the most consistent and refined representative of Radical Art Informel in Croatia. Feller is a self-taught artist who has been creating paintings in the category of their physical factuality by experimenting with non-painting materials, by using indisputable processes of creation and by rejecting organised formations of matter and form. Feller’s Art Informel is an anti-intellectual process defined by the material and factual essence of painting. It is just as topical in today’s time of constant crisis as it was in the time of its first appearance on the Croatian art scene, its topicality arising from its function as a semantic substitution of corporeality, suffering and universal alienation.
Feller has been active as an artist since 1957 and has been exhibiting since 1959. He created his most famous series of eight paintings – Malampias – at the beginning of his career. Monochromatically composed and created by applying thick layers of plaster, these are painterly facts of relief tactility, first exhibited at a solo exhibition of Feller’s work in 1962 at Studio G curated by the Gorgona Group of Artists. Feller borrowed the name for his series from a novel written by Nathalie Sarraute, a pioneer of the French “New Novel”, and her “Portrait of a Man Unknown”: She must have loved that nice big Malempia of theirs (from J. Denegri). Sarraute’s use of the term implies an objective naturalism of sorts. The features of Feller’s Malampias are more akin to the spiritual moods and ambiances conceived by the New Novel than to the philosophy of existentialism (J. Denegri). In fine arts, Malampias signify anti-painting of sorts, the foundations of which are different from those of painter Julije Knifer. The Yellow Surface from 1961 is a self-sufficient work of Art Informel that achieves the processuality of painting and materialises the physical reality of the image with two types of monochrome layers: shallow and relief.
In the next stage of his career, Feller created minimalist objects in painted wood and colour screen prints, and in the 1980s he neared primary Abstract Art. Since the 2000s he has been creating geometric structures, which often intervene directly into space. He has lived in Italy since 1969, and is the recipient of the 2016 “Vladimir Nazor” Lifetime Achievement Award.

Text: Željko Marciuš, museum advisor of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Musem of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb, 2022

Ivo Gattin, Red Surface, 1961

Ivo Gattin
(1926-1978)
Red Surface, 1961
burnt resin on jute
103,5×155,4 cm
MG-2555

Ivo Gattin (1926-1978) was the first and leading representative of Art Informel in Croatia. Radicalism and experimentation with non-painterly materials (pigment, wax, sand, resin, wire) and creative processes (coating, burning, piercing, scratching, tearing, beating, decollage) were his character traits (art historian Igor Zidić) and the key methods of his material and physical, abstract expression. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (1946-1951). At first, he created in the spirit of Surrealism (a 1956 exhibition, Zagreb), from which – at the peak of Art Informel (1956-1963) – formless matter developed with the help of controlled automatism and unpredictability. Gattin’s 1957 exhibition in Zagreb came as a shock and raised the question of whether it was truly art. Between 1963 and 1970 he lived in Milan and did illustrations. He created drawings and prints by frottage (rubbing), burning and tearing. In 1967 he took a career break, after which he returned in 1976. The key determinants of Gattin’s Art Informel are monochrome pictures and deviations from the rectangular format, which he transformed into amorphous objects that spread into space thanks to Gattin having penetrated their matter.

Ivo Gattin’s Red Surface from 1961 is a shapeless, course, monochrome, uterine, procedural and perforated mass which space penetrates through and which evokes the very essence of the process of painting. Semantically speaking, the Red Surface is an existential reflection of anxiety in the midst of the Cold War.
Gattin exhibited independently in Zagreb (1956, 1957, 1978), Venice (1959), Milan (1964) and Novara (1965). In 1992, curator Branka Stipančić organised a problem-based exhibition of Gattin’s work at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.

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

Šime Perić, Composition IV, 1961

Šime Perić
(1920-2019)
Composition IV, 1961
oil on hardboard, 170×122 cm
MG-4500

Šime Perić (1920-2019) was a figurative-abstract fantasist and a classic of Croatian painting. During the 1950s, his works developed from impressionistic colouristic figuration into gesture- and Tachisme-based abstraction. After his darkish Art Informel period during the 1960s, in the 1970s he produced paintings of refined yet colouristically intense expression. He started abandoning quadrangular canvases and sometimes painted tondos, whose circular form evokes the archetypal image of an island. In the 1980s he began sculpting as well, and successfully so. In 1949 he spent a semester studying fresco painting in Paris at the National School of Fine Arts, which turned out to be of crucial importance for Perić’s painting
and expanded his horizons intellectually. He graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade in 1952 and worked as an associate at painter Krsto Hegedušić’s master workshop until 1957. He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb between 1969 and 1984.

The motif of stain and its transformation into colouristic centrifugal and centripetal motion is one of the bedrocks of Perić’s oeuvre. His Composition IV painting from 1961 defines Art Informel in Croatia both chronologically and morphologically. The painting is executed by grading clusters of formless, magma-like matter. It lies at the crossroads of factuality, the physical materiality of painting and the feelings of restlessness and existential angst it expresses.

Šime Perić is the recipient of the 1989 Vladimir Nazor Lifetime Achievement Award given yearly by Croatia’s Ministry of Culture. In 2003 Perić’s monograph was authored by art historians Tonko Maroević and Mladenka Šolman. In 2007, the 12th leg of the White Road in the Dubrova Sculpture Park near the town of Labin in Istria was built based on Perić’s designs.

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

Eugen Feller, Malampia, 1961

Eugen Feller (1942)
Malampia, 1961
mixed media on canvas
52×48.5 cm
MG-6783

Eugen Feller (1942) is, besides Ivo Gattin, the most consistent and refined representative of Radical Art Informel in Croatia. Feller is a self-taught artist who has been creating paintings in the category of their physical factuality by experimenting with non-painting materials, by using indisputable processes of creation and by rejecting organised formations of matter and form. Feller’s Art Informel is an anti-intellectual process defined by the material and factual essence of painting. It is just as topical in today’s time of constant crisis as it was in the time of its first appearance on Croatia’s art scene, with its topicality arising from its function as a semantic substitution of corporeality, suffering and universal alienation.
Feller has been active as an artist since 1957 and has been exhibiting since 1959. He created his most famous series of eight paintings called Malampias at the beginning of his career. Monochromatically composed and created by applying thick layers of plaster, these are painterly facts of relief tactility, first exhibited at a solo exhibition of Feller’s work in 1962 at Studio G curated by the Gorgona Group of Artists. Feller borrowed the name for his series from a novel written by a pioneer of the French New Novel Movement, namely Nathalie Sarraute and her Portrait of a Man Unknown. Sarraute’s use of the term implies an objective naturalism of sorts. The features of Feller’s Malampias are, according to art historian and critic Ješa Denegri, more akin to the spiritual moods and ambiances conceived by the French New Novel Movement than to the philosophy of existentialism. In fine arts, Malampias signify anti-painting of sorts whose foundations are different from those of painter Julije Knifer’s.
In the next stage of his career, Feller created minimalist objects in painted wood and colour screen prints, and in the 1980s he neared primary Abstract Art. Since the 2000s he has been creating geometric structures, which often intervene directly in space. He has lived in Italy since
1969, and is the recipient of the 2016 Vladimir Nazor Lifetime Achievement Award given annually by Croatia’s Ministry of Culture.

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

Šime Perić, Composition III, 1961

Šime Perić
Composition III, 1961
oil on hardboard, 170 x 122 cm
MG-4305

Šime Perić (1920 – 2019) was a figurative-abstract fantasist and a classic of Croatian painting. During the 1950s, his oeuvre developed from the impressionist colourist figuration to a gestural and Tachisme-based abstraction. After his tenebrous Art Informel period during the 1960s, in the 1970s he produced paintings with a refined and intensely colouristic expression. Abandoning quadrangular form of the canvas, the paintings are sometimes executed in the form of tondos, whose circular form evokes the archetypal image of an island. In the 1980s he began sculpting as well, and successfully so. In 1949, he spent a semester studying fresco painting in Paris at the École des beaux-arts, which expanded his horizons intellectually and was of crucial importance for Perić’s painting. He graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade in 1952 and worked as an associate at painter Krsto Hegedušić’s master workshop until 1957. He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb between 1969 and 1984.
The motif of dots and their transformation into colouristic centrifugal and centripetal motion is one of the bedrocks of Perić’s oeuvre. Composition III from 1961 defines Art Informel in Croatia both chronologically and morphologically. The painting is executed by grading clusters of formless, magma-like matter. It lies at the intersection of factuality, physical materiality of painting and feelings of restlessness and existential angst it expresses.
Šime Perić was the recipient of the “Vladimir Nazor” Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989, and in 2003 Perić’s monograph by T. Maroević and M. Šolman was published. In 2007, the 12th section of the “White Road” in the Dubrova Sculpture Park near Labin was realized according to Perić’s designs.

Text: Željko Marciuš, museum consultant at 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

Đuro Seder, Composition, 1961

Đuro Seder
(1927 - 2022)
Composition, 1961
oil on canvas
110 x 135 cm
MG-4095

Đuro Seder is a multifaceted, universal painter. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1951 (mentored by Antun Mezdjić, 1951; attended Marino Tartaglia’s special course, 1953). He worked as an illustrator and graphic designer, and in the mid-1950s he painted dynamised paintings in the spirit of Tachisme. Being the founding member of the Gorgona art group (1959-1966) that brought together artists of a shared spiritual kinship, he advocated a Neo-Avant-Garde spirit, freedom of art and thought, which heralded the New Art Practice that came later. Seder’s oeuvre displays a unique progression from the mute, dark impossibility of painting (Seder’s essay, 1971) in the form of non-iconic Art Informel (Composition, 1961) to black and dark green expressive figuration from the late 1970s that gradually announced the possibilities of painting (Seder’s essay, 1981) and New Image painting (1981), of which he is one of the pioneers. Seder’s Composition (1961) emanates a logical fact: the painting is a non-descriptive composition that refers to nothing outside its materiality. It is a seemingly completely monochrome, existentialist-Art-Informelist and layered dark visualisation from which occasional red dabs glow. It is devoid of any reference to reality, other than its being stripped bare, and the processes of painting. In the 1990s, Seder developed a distinctive Neo-Expressionism of total painting, as well as a series of ironic and self-ironic self-portraits featuring a healthy dose of humour and, on occasion, joy in the vein of the New Wild (since 2007), and new spiritual-sacral painting.

Text: Željko Marciuš, Museum advisor of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb 2022
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb 2022

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