Anabel Zanze
Two Columns II, 2004.
Oil on canvas
81 x 65 cm
MG-6875
Anabel Zanze (b. 1971) is an academic painter and graphic artist who graduated from the Graphic Arts Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1996, in the class of Ante Kuduz. Her distinctive style involves creating unique collages or paintings featuring series of letters, inspired by avant-garde and neo-avant-garde artistic movements. Zanze has showcased her paintings and prints in numerous exhibitions in Croatia and abroad.
Anabel Zanze’s painting Two Columns II depicts exactly what its title suggests: text arranged in two adjacent columns on canvas. However, the text does not stay confined to a single column but crosses the gap between the two, continuing from one to the other. By doing so, Zanze suggests that the boundary between the verbal and the visual can be transcended through painting. The piece emphasises the graphic quality and design of the letters, highlighting the visual value of the typographic elements that weave the text together.
Moreover, placing text on a canvas does not diminish its capacity to convey visual content. Instead, it highlights the versatility of the painting surface, which can incorporate text while still being perceived as a painting. This method challenges the interdisciplinary nature of art, presenting the observer/reader with the compelling argument that any attempt to conceptually encapsulate an image through text is doomed to fail. The painting cannot be fully captured by its textual description; it remains a painting, even when it only displays text.
Text: Filip Kučeković, intern curator 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