Tag: Antun Motika

Antun Motika, Bull, 1962

Antun Motika
(1902 – 1992)
Bull, 1962
stained crystal glass
39 x 48 x 18cm
MG-2751

Antun Motika is one of the most important Croatian artists of the 20th century whose painting had a considerable impact in the period between the two world wars. He developed his own visual poetics after returning from his study trip in Paris (1930 – 1931), a kind of variant of post-Impressionism, which was manifested in the free application of thin layers of paint, a discreet, almost ornamental drawing and a frequent low angle perspective. Even though he started studying sculpture under R. Valdec, Motika completed his painting studies in 1926, under legendary professors of the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts, M. Vanka, V. Becić, T. Krizman and Lj. Babić. His works from the time he spent in Mostar are a particular standout in his oeuvre, with their increasingly bright palette and a lyrical atmosphere of sorts. In early 1940, he initiated systematic research of different materials in the studio. In 1952, he created a series of drawings titled Archaic Surrealism, in which he advocated for complete freedom of artistic expression. During the 1950s and 1960s, he made book illustrations, through which he presented his experiences of music and realised his own variant of visual poetry. He also started modelling glass sculptures in collaboration with the glass factory in Rogaška Slatina and the glass workshops in Murano, uniting the skill of modelling volume and the obsession with pure light, its refraction and lumino-kinetic effects with the application of the pictorial faktura in the form of colouristic interventions.
Motika has participated in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad, and has exhibited twice at the Venice Biennale. In 1975, he became a corresponding member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.
The museum sculpture Bull from 1962 was made in Murano, and with its fragile form of transparent crystal glass and only a few colour interventions (horns and spots on the upper body), it represents a witty paradox of the traditional depiction of an animal that is considered the embodiment of strength.

Text: Dajana Vlaisavljević, 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

Antun Motika, Medal Set / The Female Cyclist , 1984

Antun Motika
(1902 – 1992)
Medal Set / The Female Cyclist , 1984
bronze
d=72.8 mm
MG-4487/10

Antun Motika studied sculpture at the Royal Academy of Arts and Crafts (R. Valdec), but later switched to study painting (M. Vanka, V. Becić, Lj. Babić) and graduated in 1926. He attended two post-graduate semesters in the class of Lj. Babić (1926 – 1927). From 1929 – 1931, he drew caricatures for the Zagreb satirical magazine Koprive. From 1929 – 1940, he lived and worked in Mostar as a professor of drawing. In 1930 and 1935, he received scholarships to study in Paris. He staged his first solo exhibitions in Zagreb in 1933 and 1935. In 1940, he was transferred to Zagreb, where he worked at the School of Applied Arts until his retirement in 1961.

His exhibition Archaic Surrealism (1952) was of particular cultural significance, having provoked tumultuous reactions among Croatian critics, and is generally considered as the boldest rejection of the dogmatic frameworks of Socialist Realism. Motika expressed an autonomous artistic practice by creating the preconditions for a new formal syntax, which is going to come to the fore in his drawings, projects and experiments, collages, paintings and sculptures.

He transferred motifs from numerous studies and drawings to bronze medals. A series of 25 medal works that is kept in the National Museum of Modern Art, confirms the uniqueness of this self-effacing, versatile and exclusive Croatian artist whose dream visions were transformed into a fantastical world of associative figuration. On the medal The Female Cyclist, he builds a dynamic scene in a deformed perspective using intersecting surfaces and visual fragments of a woman with recognisable attributes and two wheels.

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

Antun Motika, In the Bathroom, c. 1931

Antun Motika
In the Bathroom, C. 1931
gouache on paper
MG-1650

After having graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1926, Antun Motika attended the postgraduate study in painting under Ljubo Babić and drew caricatures for the satirical magazine Koprive at the same time. What will, however, have a decisive influence on his painting is his work as a teacher at the Grammar School in Mostar and his nine-month study trip to Paris in 1930.

“In the Bathroom” is one of several paintings Motika created during his stay in Paris. Student dorm rooms in major European centres were used by Croatian artists as both living and working spaces, which meant that the apartment – usually one-bedroom – was also a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a studio. In several paintings from that period, Motika showed a more detailed layout of that space. For example, “A Room in Paris 2” depicts a bed on the left side with several paintings leaning against the wall; at the foot of the bed is a small wood-burning stove, and on the right side are a small kitchen and a large white bathtub. The white bathtub can also be seen in this painting, as well as the grid of the floor tiling (carpet?). To paint not only what the eye sees, but to convey the experience of seeing, is the task that Motika set for himself. In the painting, the contours of human figures, a woman getting out of the bathtub and a man watching her, dissolve into the atmosphere of steaming hot water; coloured surfaces are inconsistent; the scene is dominated by spots of colour, not forms or figures, and it altogether flickers in an impressionist way and almost disappears from view.

Text: Klaudio Štefančić,curator of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb 2022.
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb 2022.

Antun Motika, Medal Set / Female Cyclist, 1984

 

 

 

 

ANTUN MOTIKA

1902 – 1992

 

Medal Set / The Female Cyclist

1984

bronze

d=72.8 mm

MG-4487/10

 

Antun Motika studied sculpture at the Royal Academy of Arts and Crafts (R. Valdec), but later switched to study painting (M. Vanka, V. Becić, Lj. Babić) and graduated in 1926. He attended two post-graduate semesters in the class of Lj. Babić (1926 – 1927). From 1929 – 1931, he drew caricatures for the Zagreb satirical magazine Koprive. From 1929 – 1940, he lived and worked in Mostar as a professor of drawing. In 1930 and 1935, he received scholarships to study in Paris. He staged his first solo exhibitions in Zagreb in 1933 and 1935. In 1940, he was transferred to Zagreb, where he worked at the School of Applied Arts until his retirement in 1961.

His exhibition Archaic Surrealism (1952) was of particular cultural significance, having provoked tumultuous reactions among Croatian critics, and is generally considered as the boldest rejection of the dogmatic frameworks of Socialist Realism. Motika expressed an autonomous artistic practice by creating the preconditions for a new formal syntax, which is going to come to the fore in his drawings, projects and experiments, collages, paintings and sculptures.

He transferred motifs from numerous studies and drawings to bronze medals. A series of 25 medal works that is kept in the National Museum of Modern Art, confirms the uniqueness of this self-effacing, versatile and exclusive Croatian artist whose dream visions were transformed into a fantastical world of associative figuration. On the medal The Female Cyclist, he builds a dynamic scene in a deformed perspective using intersecting surfaces and visual fragments of a woman with recognisable attributes and two wheels.

 

Text Tatijana Gareljić, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

 

 

 

 

Antun Motika, Muslim Woman, 1934

Antun Motika
Muslim Woman, 1934
oil on canvas
96 x 70 cm
MG-2038

The painting Muslim Woman from 1934 presents Motika’s poetics of passionate subjectivism. He developed the experiences of French Post-Impressionism with the freer application of standard artistic materials and procedures. Motika accompanied the moment of lyrical beauty with an arabesque of balanced tones. Motika’s subtle poetics develops towards abstraction in this vision of a weightless world in which the figurative is achieved with only a flash of colour.

Antun Motika interrupted the study of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and decided to study painting instead. He graduated in 1926. He continued his studies with Ljubo Babić. He publishes caricatures in the magazine Koprive (under the pseudonym Lopata) and often experiments with art techniques. From 1929 to 1940, he teaches drawing at the Grammar School in Mostar. After his study trips to Paris in 1930 and 1935, Motika’s Mostar oeuvre became increasingly more abstract. He returned to Zagreb in 1941 and for the next twenty years he taught courses in textile, photography and ceramics, and he systematically experimented with collage, decalcomania, “smoked paper”, photographic prints and organic materials. He exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1942 and 1952. With the drawing series Archaic Surrealism, which he exhibited in Zagreb in 1952, he completely abandoned all ideological dogmas and socialist realist burdens of his contemporary artistic and social moment. In the pursuit of liberation from everything extra-artistic, drawing as an artistic wellspring permeates all phases of Motika’s work. Since 1953, he created a significant number of glass sculptures with colouristic interventions in Rogaška Slatina and Murano. He also designed ceramics and small-scale sculpture (medals and plaques) in iron.

Text: Lada Bošnjak Velagić, 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

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