Tag: 1987.

Ratko Petrić, A Thorn, 1987

Ratko Petrić
(1941-2010)
A Thorn, 1987
bronze, aluminium
MG-5894

Ratko Petrić (1941-2010) graduated in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1966 under sculptor and Prof. Vanja Radauš and worked as an associate at his master workshop between 1966 and 1969. In 1998 he started teaching as an associate professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. He was a co-founding member of the Biafra Art Group, the initiator of the Alley of Sculptures on the Sava Embankment in Zagreb, and of the International Art Colony and Sculpture Park in Jakovlje. He also did graphics and caricature, and authored notable public monuments.
Petrić’s sculptures feature an interest in social issues and communicate socially engaged messages. He is most famous for his provocative sculptures of a critical discourse, which question social contradictions. His sculptures are not only beautiful objects, but also have, as Petrić himself claimed, the eyes of many popping out of their heads. To suit the shockingness of the scene he presents, his sculptural expression explores peculiarities and features the use of new materials and modelling techniques.
Regardless of whether his work is figurative or abstract, Petrić’s creative credo is critical social engagement. Even when he used classical sculpture materials and techniques, he modelled unexpected associative metaphorical objects of sharp contrasts, such as his A Thorn sculpture from 1987.

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

Vladimir Gašparić Gapa, Small Sun Chariot, 1987

Vladimir Gašparić Gapa
Small Sun Chariot, 1987
bronze
28 x 30 x 55.5 cm
MG-5986

Vladimir Gašparić Gapa graduated in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1975, in the class of Valerije Michieli. After graduation, he worked in Ivan Sabolić’s Master Workshop, and since 2003 he has been a lecturer at the Sculpture Department of the Academy of Fine Arts. He spent time studying in Italy, Germany, Sweden and Austria.
Initially, he created expressive figurative art, but he was recognized as an author of abstract sculptures executed in wood, bronze and granite, with symbolic content and expressive power. He creates reductive and expressive works with playful geometric structures, dynamic forms and unusual relationships between elements. He produces analytical and constructivist works in series, examining and perfecting new forms and expressions. He shapes clear constructive complexes of open structures characterized by wood carving techniques and elements. The rustic quality and carving are replaced in newer works by the smoothed and polished surfaces rendered in granite, while the sculptural style has been adapted to the characteristics of the material.
The sculpture, poetically titled a Small Sun Chariot, has a constructivist morphology and is composed of two relatively narrow, separately formed elements connected into a single dynamic surface of balanced correlations.

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

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