Tag: 1990.

Željko Lapuh, Keepers of Silence, 1990

Željko Lapuh
Keepers of Silence, 1990
oil on canvas
74 cm x 100 cm
MG-5923

Željko Lapuh is a postmodern painter who merges traditional figurative painting with elements of metaphysics in his own stylistic symbiosis. His painting Keepers of Silence from 1990, depicts a solitary, sculpturally defined group devoid of individuality, with faces resembling masks, almost lacking human characteristics. The gaze ushers the observer into a mystical world of existence imbued with profound silence. The protagonists of Lapuh’s compositions dominate in an indefinite, minimally defined plastic background of an imaginary space in which they are placed. In this painting, the metaphysical atmosphere is accentuated precisely by the neutral background and the light-dark colour palette that create a habitat for the “mythological creatures” from Lapuh’s bestiary. Monolithic geometric shapes, constructed beyond mathematical or natural laws, form the scenic backdrop of the presented world. The only hint of character, or rather identity of the represented protagonist, arises from the title of the painting, Keepers of Silence. Lapuh employs a symbolic language in his painting, introducing the observer to a world beyond reality, inspired by the Italian art movement Pittura Metafisica and its founder Giorgio de Chirico.
Željko Lapuh (1951) was born in Split. He completed primary and secondary school in Zagreb. He obtained a degree in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1976 in the class of prof. Šime Perić. He was an associate in prof. Ljubo Ivančić’s and prof. Nikola Reiser’s Master Workshop. He received critical and broader public acclaim for his two cycles; Metamorphoses, 1989–92 and The Secret of Change, 1990–96 which have intrigued the art scene. He has staged solo exhibitions in Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Milan, New York and throughout his career has organised more than thirty solo and 150 group exhibitions.

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

Mladen Stilinović, A Full Belly Distrusts an Empty One / DEATH, 1990

Mladen Stilinović
A Full Belly Distrusts an Empty One / DEATH, 1990
enamelled metal plate
d=220 mm
MG-6358

Mladen Stilinović, one of the most prominent representatives of Conceptual art in Croatia and former Yugoslavia, was born in 1947 in Belgrade, a city that he maintained strong artistic ties with even after his family returned to Zagreb in 1959, by socialising and collaborating with artists such as Neša Paripović, Raša Todosijević, Marina Abramović, and others. Like his brother Sven Stilinović, with whom he would collaborate in the Group of Six Authors, Mladen Stilinović dropped out of high school, choosing to follow a self-taught path. At first, he was drawn by literature and philosophy, and then film. By the mid-1970s, he made a dozen experimental films, but his interest, fully in line with the basic principles of Conceptual art, led him further, towards researching the relationship between language, art and ideology. First, he created collages in which he brought everyday language and utility objects into unusual connections, and then he applied the same principle to the field of the so-called New Media, such as an artist’s book or film. Stilinović’s fundamental artistic preoccupation was devoted to examining the relationship between man and language. He believed that every language is contaminated by ideology and that human personality is essentially determined by the way in which a person learns a certain language. Although he uses a folk proverb in the object “A Full Belly Distrusts an Empty One”, and not, for example, the language of state authorities from the socialist and post-socialist historical period, Stilinović has no illusions: behind language there is always a social order. “In most of my works I use everyday things: plates, spoons, money, eggs, cakes… They speak about the power and blackmail of the State and about the state mechanisms that manipulate us through money, language, various jobs.” When asked on one occasion why he adds the word “death” to the titles of certain works, Stilinović replied that he only adds it to those phrases that sound threatening. And indeed, slogans and proverbs such as “He who works is not afraid of hunger” or “No work no food”, do not enlighten, but warn. Stilinović would say that they form and standardise us, make us part of certain social communities whose functioning principles, however, we must not take for granted.

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

Zlatko Keser, Untitled, 1990

Zlatko Keser
Untitled, 1990
pencil, charcoal, felt-tip pen, collage, paper
199 x 144 cm
MG-7069

Zlatko Keser (1942) belongs to the second generation of Croatian abstract painters. He graduated in 1967 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and briefly pursued a kind of postgraduate education through collaboration with Krsto Hegedušić. Keser’s individual artistic path begins in the late 1960s, at a time when abstract painting, whether in its expressive or geometric forms, takes a back seat, giving way to innovation in conceptual art and its new mediums: performance, happening, video, art installation, etc. Although closer in generation to artists of the conceptual orientation, Keser turned to post-war painting, and in his work, we can recognize influences of Art Informel, Art Brut, and Abstract Expressionism. In this tradition, both American and European, Keser sought only those stimuli that allowed him to be spontaneous and free. While spontaneity can be recognized in the morphology of each of his paintings or drawings – lines and colours being nothing more than the function of an energetic gesture – Keser’s freedom is most easily recognizable in his solitary position within the historical development of Croatian art. It is difficult to associate him with the first generation of abstract painters (Edo Murtić, Oton Gliha, Šime Perić, and others) because Keser denies the compositional harmony of the painting. For him, it seems that only the process of painting exists, and the actual painting is of secondary importance. On the other hand, it is difficult to connect him with the abstract painters of his generation (Nikola Koydl, Ivo Friščić, and others) because they depart from the legacy of expressionistic abstraction and align themselves with the spirit of the time embodied in Pop Art. However, Keser is not only solitary; he is also a wild painter, and as such, he is a strange but homologous companion to the rebellious culture of the 1960s.

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

Skip to content