Albert Kinert
A Member of the Youth Organisation, 1948
oil on canvas, 30 x 20 cm
MG-1547
Albert Kinert (1919 – 1987) had a multifaceted artistic personality. He was a painter, graphic artist, illustrator, comic book author and sculptor. Kinert’s unity of diversity, conditioned by his artistic existence, banished every other interest from his life and Kinert’s biography is therefore nothing more than his artistic oeuvre (J. Bučan). This also applies to the artist’s attitude towards his own socio-cultural milieu, its artistic tradition and fantastic artistic worlds. Kinert’s entire oeuvre is based on synchronicities between the media and the concrete (figurative) and abstract expression. Close to a kind of Post-Impressionism, his style was also inspired by Japanese prints, prehistoric painting and Archaic Greek art. The artist developed his painting form into unconventional visual complexes made from the lyrically intoned coloured dots. In the 1960s, he moved away from narration and expressed himself in an abstract manner, which gradually led to the harmonisation of the organically abstract and concrete signs (Wrath – In the Tavern, 1979, The Damned in His Paradise, 1980). He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1946 (T. Krizman), where he worked as an assistant professor since 1961, then a full professor, and since 1971 as an associate professor, as well as the head of the special graphic arts department. He produced numerous print and watercolour portfolios and received many awards for his work. In 1957, he participated in the exhibition of the Mart Group, and he was one of the founders of the Zagreb 58 Group. His painting A Member of the Youth Organisation (1948) is an unconventional work, belonging to the poetics of Socialist Realism because it represents a hidden figure-portrait, and the only references to the historical period are the title, the figure’s pose and attributes of clothing. Standouts among his many exhibitions are the retrospectives at the Modern Gallery (today the NMMU) in 1985 (D. Schneider) and 2018 (I. Körbler), which valorised and revalued Kinert’s place in Modern art in Croatia.
Text: Željko Marciuš, 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