Tag: 1965.

Frano Kršinić, Meditation, 1965

Frano Kršinić
(1897 - 1982)
Meditation, 1965
carving, marble
28 x 38 x 16 cm
MG-2613

Frano Kršinić, a member of the academy and an academic sculptor, studied in Prague and worked as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he also served as a rector for many years. With a lyrical soul, he remained deeply connected to his homeland while pursuing his artistic and pedagogical career in Zagreb. He solidified his subtle formative style through artistic endeavours that spanned over half a century in Croatian modern art. Kršinić revitalised the ancient Mediterranean stone-working tradition in an innovative way, merging a high level of craftsmanship with a direct understanding of the essence of things, marked by lyrical sensitivity, graceful subtle movements, and a gentle overall atmosphere. His works are genuinely unconditional and cohesive entities, featuring rounded, synthetic forms, artistically executed with a high degree of sculptural purity.
Kršinić is a poet of the female form, a sculptor captivated by lyricism and the motifs of his childhood (the island and the sea). He reached the pinnacle of creativity with his distinctive female nudes in bronze, stone, and marble, each consistently radiating a captivating charm, grace, and vitality.
Kršinić’s sculpture embodies a dreamy enchantment, timeless tranquillity, and introspective quality, as exemplified by the marble female nude “Meditation” from 1965. This allegory of meditation is an intimate piece, characterised by sumptuous nudity and the warm fullness of a youthful body. Through gentle modelling and subtly suggested facial features, the artist appears to realise a dream that is just beginning to take shape in reality. His intimist works, inspired by lyrical experiences, are distinguished by their authentic accent. In his creations, Kršinić elevated femininity to a symbolic level. The poetry of the young female body is shaped into a flawless synthesis of plasticity. These works radiate beauty through rhythm and harmony, serenity, and balance. By exploring the motifs of women, he achieved the metaphysical principles of existence, resolving the ancient dichotomy between body and spirit. His subtly carved female nudes in marble stand as the finest examples of this genre in our art, celebrated for their pure beauty of form and surface.

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

Krsto Hegedušić, Pater noster, 1965

Krsto Hegedušić
Pater noster, 1965
tempera on canvas; mixed media
120 x 140 cm
MG-3330

Krsto Hegedušić (1901 – 1975) is an exceptional Croatian painter with a distinct critical edge. His oeuvre is found at the crossroads of the heritage of Flemish Renaissance (P. Breughel), the primitive, naïve and the so-called our expression, and engaged Realism – naturalism under the influence of New Objectivity (G. Grosz). He has also adopted the experiences of Expressionism, Cubism, Fauvism and Surrealism, all of which contributed to the original critical substrate. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1926 (Lj. Babić, T. Krizman; V. Becić’s advanced course) and continued his studies in Paris from 1926 to 1928. With L. Junek, he helped found the Earth Association of Artists and organize their exhibitions (1929 – 1935) until they were banned by the police. Since 1930, in Hlebine, he gave painting lessons to peasants (I. Generalić, F. Mraz) and then showed their work at the exhibition of the Earth Association (1931). In 1932, he published a collection of social-critical drawings titled Podravina Motifs with a foreword written by M. Krleža. Because of his socialist beliefs, he was imprisoned several times. In 1937, he became a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, and since the 1950s he taught a Master Workshop. He illustrated Krleža’s Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh (1946). In the post-war period, he synthesized his style by painting anxiety-ridden and alienated urban motifs. The painting Pater Noster (1965) refers to the hopeless multiplication of identical urban identity, cloned individuals on a conveyor belt – the escalator of modernity. He encouraged the establishment of the Fine Arts Archive and the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He made the ceremonial curtain of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb (Anno Domini 1573) in 1969, and was the recipient of the “Vladimir Nazor” Lifetime Achievement Award in 1970.

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

Miroslav Šutej, Ultra A, 1965

Miroslav Šutej
(1936-2005)
Ultra A, 1965
wall paint on wood
220x121.5x20 cm
MG-2592

Miroslav Šutej (1936-2005) was one of the most visionary Croatian painters, graphic and ambience artists of High Modernism and Postmodernism. His Ultra A painting-object from 1965 is an example of Optical Art, a modernist movement featuring optical and hypnotic traits that trick the human eye. Šutej built Ultra A’s black and white elegance by multiplying and bulging positives and negatives of his distinctive signature sign. The painting is a combination of science and art typical of the positivist and modernist New Tendencies international art movement (Zagreb, 1961-1973). Šutej graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1961 under Prof. Marijan Detoni and worked as an associate at painter Krsto Hegedušić’s master workshop from 1961 to 1963. In 1966, Šutej started creating more pronounced three-dimensional painting-objects. He made his artworks of complex yet pure conception movable and tactile, to suggest growth, expansion and immersion in the object. He also introduced colour which enhanced the dynamics of his visualisations. He transformed his works into playful objects, and also transferred the mobility of his painting-objects to the field of graphic arts and drawing. After the mid-1970s, Šutej turned to the motifs of folklore and eroticism, and in the 1980s he started creating painting-drawings, collages and mixed-media works of a distinct colourism. He also did ambience and video installations (e.g., Covered Eyes, 2004). Miroslav Šutej was a homo ludens who played by creating and who enthroned play as a fundamental element of his art. In line with Šutej’s credo – which was recorded by art historian Damir Grubić to be the following: Everything is play, play is everything! – the concept of the importance of play and the extent to which it defines the artistic dimension of an individual is mirrored in Šutej’s oeuvre as a whole.

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

Ivan Kožarić, Shape of Space XVIII, 1965

Ivan Kožarić
(1921-2020)
Shape of Space XVIII, 1965
bronze
MG-2626

Ivan Kožarić, an avant-garde Croatian sculptor, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1949, and completed Prof. Antun Augustinčić’s master course. In 1959 and 1960 he stayed and studied in Paris. Between 1959 and 1966 he was a member of the unconventional avant-garde Gorgona Group, which brought together the most prominent names in contemporary Croatian art. Several of his sculptures are mounted in public spaces, amongst which his monument to writer Antun Gustav Matoš and his Landed Sun in Zagreb are the most famous.
Since the very beginning of his career as an artist, his sculptural expression has fluidly encompassed a wide array of expressions, ranging from expressiveness, condensed forms to conceptual projects. He experimented with different materials and techniques, and introduced the principles of redesign and recycling of various everyday items and his own sculptures. He modelled a number of emblematic pieces of conceptual openness and originality, often featuring a touch of creative humour.
In the period between 1961 and 1969, Ivan Kožarić modelled a series of abstract sculptures called Shapes of Space displaying his distinct feeling for the values of space. Kožarić’s Shape of Space XVIII sculpture from 1965 is defined by a dominant upright form of soft and rounded surfaces and outlines. The spatial forms contained within and on it – hollowed out deeper and shallower forms – are suggestive of spiritual traces, metaphysical properties and openness of interpretation.

Text: Tatijana Gareljić, 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

Ante Kuduz, A Frame, 1965

Ante Kuduz
(1935-2011)
A Frame, 1965
ink on paper
MG-2627

At first glance, Ante Kuduz’s drawing may come across as an avant-garde comic panel or movie synopsis: it’s a series of square frames equal in size organised in a way which is suggestive of linear progression which can remind viewers of a visual story. Each frame is filled with different graphic shapes and no two frames are identical. Kuduz drew in black ink a specific scene in each of the frames. Although each scene is completely self-contained, it nevertheless does have some sort of a relationship with not only those which it directly borders with, but all the other frames too. The title itself of the drawing is yet another element which is reminiscent of the world of movies, but we have to take it metaphorically because, in cinematography, a frame is not only the rectangular outline of a scene, but also indicates the length of shooting, camera operating time between two editing cuts. Accordingly, Kuduz wanted to underscore the dynamic aspect of the drawing, to create the illusion of (the passage of) time in a medium that does not have three dimensions.

Ante Kuduz’s A Frame from 1965 that we are presenting here is part of a series of drawings and graphic sheets of the same name which he created in the period between 1965 and 1972. Over the course of seven years, Kuduz changed the formats of paper, the technology of execution (freehand or mechanical drawing), the shapes created by the interaction between the frames – besides rectangular, he introduced compositions of round shapes too – and even introduced colour into his drawings at some point. However, the one feature that remained essentially unchanged was the square or frame as the basic unit of his scenes.

Ante Kuduz was born in 1935. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1961, where he later worked as a professor. Together with painters Miroslav Šutej, Ivan Picelj, Mladen Galić, Ljerka Šibenik and others, he was a member of the so-called Zagreb School of Serigraphy. He received many awards for his work in the field of graphic arts. He passed away in Zagreb in 2011.

Text: Klaudio Štefančić, senior curator 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

Belizar Bahorić, Opposites, 1965

Belizar Bahorić
(1920-2002)
Opposites, 1965
bronze
MG-2573

Belizar Bahorić studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in the period between 1940 and 1950 (sculptors Antun Augustinčić and Frano Kršinić’s master classes). In 1950 he started teaching art, and in the period between 1962 and 1976 he was the principal of the School of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb.
Several stages of development are evident in Bahorić’s sculptural oeuvre. He interpreted his own fate, prisons, camps and World War II as a challenge to human strength and trauma both through the mediums of painting and sculpture, the end result of which are realistic reliefs and sculptures featuring themes of war, suffering and resistance. He gradually abandoned the tradition of Figurative Art and in the 1960s started focusing on the expressiveness of materials in symbolic forms bearing the features of abstraction. In the 1970s, he was preoccupied with symbolic and metaphorical associations, which he modelled in extremely rounded and simple sign-like forms in different metals and in small formats. In his small-size sculptures, he aimed to enrich their materials by using different methods of treatment and to discover the materials’ distinct expressive value. He sculpted a number of public monuments and drawings whose theme is war and suffering.
Belizar Bahorić’s abstract Opposites sculpture from 1965 is dominated by a rectangular construction and a rhythm of mass, which are accentuated by a view of the sculpture’s interior space which is cut wide open.

Text: Tatijana Gareljić, 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

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