Tag: Dance

Željko Hegedušić, Dance, Paris, 1930

Željko Hegedušić
(1906 - 2004)
Dance, Paris, 1930
ink on paper
265 x 178 mm
MG-6536

Hegedušić was born in 1906 in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the artistic environment of Zagreb and later Paris will play a crucial role in his artistic development. In 1931, Hegedušić moved to Paris to continue his specialised education. Before devoting himself fully to working under the strong influence of Surrealism, in the period from 1930 to 1941 Hegedušić created several anthological works, which can be connected to New Objectivity, an artistic movement that used grotesque to express criticism of European society between the two world wars.

The drawing “Dance, Paris” would have had all the features of an urban, hedonistic life typical of art at the turn of the century, had Hegedušić not been influenced by the artistic avant-garde and used the montage technique, on the one hand, and expanded the scene with new content, on the other. The representation of two central figures in the drawing – a dancer (a prostitute?) and an upper-class citizen – has all the hallmarks of Secession: a precise and continuous line that emphasises elegance so much that even the corpulent male figure appears light and graceful. Hegedušić, however, disrupts this Secession thread by adding three spatially and temporally completely unrelated motifs to the scene: a group of musicians in the upper part of the drawing, a group of protesters and a line of cars in the lower half of the drawing. Although all the depicted motifs are part of city life, Hegedušić avoids drawing an allegory of urban life by rendering the said motifs in different sizes, and by their arrangement on the surface. Because what Hegedušić conveys is not a story, but the critique of society. In line with the Zemlja Association of Artists, that he will exhibit with upon his return from Paris, and in line with New Objectivity, Hegedušić unequivocally points to the world of vast social differences, the easy life of some (high bourgeoisie) and the hard life of others (workers, prostitutes) in the cacophony of a metropolis such as Paris.

Klaudio Štefančić, 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

Ivo Dulčić, Dance, 1956

Ivo Dulčić
(1916-1975)
Dance, 1956
oil on canvas
69.2×87.5 cm
MG-2266

Ivo Dulčić (1916-1975) was an exceptional colourist and one of the best Croatian painters of modern sacral motifs. Up until the 1950s, he painted subdued intimist compositions, where he was interested in the epidermis of paintings. After the 1950s, he intensified and opened his palette of colours, with whose help he disperses the reality surrounding us into the smudged fabric of his paintings. From 1955 he lived in both Zagreb and Dubrovnik. Dulčić’s Colouristic Structuralism is a derivative of Abstraction – Tachisme, to be exact – but also his own personal measure by which he never exceeded the limits of figuration. In the third stage of his career (i.e., from 1959 onwards), he synthesised his knowledge which he then applied to sacral art (frescos, mosaics, stained glass) in the Church of Our Lady of Health in Split (Christ the King fresco, 1959). He created sacral art in churches in Dubrovnik, Zagreb, Sarajevo and Essen in Germany. He studied law in Belgrade and Zagreb, and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb under Prof. Ljubo Babić between 1941 and 1946, when he was expelled from the academy for denying the aesthetics of Socialist Realism and its practices. Pierre Bonnard and Jean Édouard Vuilliard are also woven into Dulčić’s Colourism, although it is mostly his very own. Ljubo Babić instilled in him a bird’s-eye view, which Dulčić transformed into a divine perspective, as it were, common of his work, which helped him to present cities and their residents as if they were in the palm of his hand. In the 1950s, he started painting cities, streets, squares and sporting events in which people are represented as silhouettes. He gradually brightened his palette with a distinct Colourism of thick coats of pure colour and started dispersing objects into stains creating a vibrant atmosphere in his paintings. He neared Abstraction with some of his compositions that he rhythmised using stains characteristic of Tachisme, but always remained connected to the real world. Dulčić’s Dance composition from 1956 is a great example of such marginal figuration, which is – thanks to patchy comparisons and colours – suggestive of the very essence of dance, i.e. movement.

Text: Željko Marciuš, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Ana Janković
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Željko Hegedušić, Dance, Paris, 1930

Željko Hegedušić
(1906 – 2004)
Dance, Paris, 1930
ink on paper, 265 x 178 mm
MG-6536

Hegedušić was born in 1906 in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the artistic environment of Zagreb and later Paris will play a crucial role in his artistic development. In 1931, Hegedušić moved to Paris to continue his specialised education. Before devoting himself fully to working under the strong influence of Surrealism, in the period from 1930 to 1941 Hegedušić created several anthological works, which can be connected to New Objectivity, an artistic movement that used grotesque to express criticism of European society between the two world wars.

The drawing “Dance, Paris” would have had all the features of an urban, hedonistic life typical of art at the turn of the century, had Hegedušić not been influenced by the artistic avant-garde and used the montage technique, on the one hand, and expanded the scene with new content, on the other. The representation of two central figures in the drawing – a dancer (a prostitute?) and an upper-class citizen – has all the hallmarks of Secession: a precise and continuous line that emphasises elegance so much that even the corpulent male figure appears light and graceful. Hegedušić, however, disrupts this Secession thread by adding three spatially and temporally completely unrelated motifs to the scene: a group of musicians in the upper part of the drawing, a group of protesters and a line of cars in the lower half of the drawing. Although all the depicted motifs are part of city life, Hegedušić avoids drawing an allegory of urban life by rendering the said motifs in different sizes, and by their arrangement on the surface. Because what Hegedušić conveys is not a story, but the critique of society. In line with the Zemlja Association of Artists, that he will exhibit with upon his return from Paris, and in line with New Objectivity, Hegedušić unequivocally points to the world of vast social differences, the easy life of some (high bourgeoisie) and the hard life of others (workers, prostitutes) in the cacophony of a metropolis such as Paris.

Klaudio Štefančić, 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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