Ferdinand Kulmer
Orange, Blue, Black, Calligraphy, 1976
mixed media on canvas
126 × 162 cm
MG-3480
Ferdinand Kulmer (1925–1998) was a distinguished modernist and postmodernist painter, known for his effortless, almost Mercurial transition from one style to another. He was a descendant of the noble Kulmer family—Styrian barons who settled in Croatia in the 18th century. The most prominent among them was Franjo Kulmer, a 19th-century jurist and politician. Art critic Tonko Maroević once insightfully compared the painter’s life to Picasso’s, saying: “Picasso first painted and then bought castles, while with Ferdinand Kulmer, it was the other way around.”
Kulmer studied painting during and after the war: first in Budapest in 1942, and later in Zagreb until 1948 under Ljubo Babić and Oton Postružnik, also collaborating in Krsto Hegedušić’s Master Workshop until 1957. His stylistic evolution over three decades was broad, fluid, and often hybrid in nature—ranging from (post-)Fauvist figuration influenced by Picasso, through an abstract phase beginning in 1957, incorporating Art Informel, Tachisme, monochromatic fields, and elements of action painting and calligraphy, all the way to postmodern neo-figuration in the 1980s.
In the 1960s, he was closely aligned with gestural Art Informel, reminiscent of Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages, while in the 1970s he turned toward Japanese calligraphy. The painting Orange, Blue, Black, Calligraphy (1976), composed in a cinematic frame-cut against a white background, is a refined example of Kulmer’s elegant calligraphic aesthetics—a kind of enigmatic script expressed in a triad of achromatic black, light blue, and orange.
Text: Željko Marciuš, museum advisor of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb