The National Museum of Modern Art opens its autumn exhibition season at the Josip Račić Gallery with the exhibition Nostalgia by Dražen Eisenbeisser. Since his first public presentation in 1992 at Gallery S in Koprivnica, this artist, and a member of HDLU Varaždin and Atelier Koprivnica, has held 22 solo exhibitions in Croatia and 57 in London, and has taken part in more than 60 group shows. He achieved a notable success in 2017 at the Mall Galleries / Federation of British Artists in London, when the exhibition committee unanimously selected his works from among more than four thousand applicants, along with an invitation to exhibit new work.
This Zagreb exhibition of the Koprivnica-based artist, who studied painting for two years under academic painters Roman Baričević and Željko Mucko, and who was mentored by academic painter Zlatko Kauzlarić Atač, a longtime professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, presents eight large-format pencil drawings produced between 2013 and 2024. Regarding these works, museum advisor and exhibition curator Željko Marciuš writes, among other things, in the text of the accompanying exhibition catalogue: (…) “A sense of nostalgia and neo-romanticism pervades Dražen Eisenbeisser’s sepia drawings. This effect emerges from the tension between intangible spirituality and a masterfully precise graphic style, in which the meticulous depiction of the city’s ruined buildings evokes ideas, reflections, restrained emotions, and quiet observations, while revealing the assured hand of an accomplished draughtsman. The artist’s neo-romanticism has its roots in the tradition of historical Romanticism, which held that feeling and the subjective experience of the world take precedence over rational definition. From this emerges the dialectic that underlies the entire series, since Eisenbeisser, through his choice of motifs (urban buildings, patina and their details) combined with an almost meticulous, rational draughtsmanship, projects a delicate and refined interiority onto the objectified drawing. In conjunction with his sensibility towards the world, this interplay produces the non-romantic atmosphere of the imago.”
The exhibition has been realised with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and the Zagreb City Office for Culture and Civil Society, and remains open until 29 September 2026. It is accompanied by a catalogue in Croatian and English, with a foreword by Željko Marciuš and graphic design by Ana Zubić.
Translated by Robertina Tomić
Reproductions: Dražen Eisenbeisser, (1) Striving, 2014 / Conte sepia pencil / Canson drawing paper, 200 g/m2 / 144 x 240 cm (2) Window B, 2024 / Conte sepia pencil / Canson drawing paper / 200 g/m2 / 144 x 90 cm (3) Entrance at no. 5, 2024 / Conte sepia pencil / Canson drawing paper / 200 g/m2 / 144 x 90 cm (4) Waves of Time, 2013 Conte sepia pencil / Canson drawing paper / 200 g/m2 / 144 x 270 cm /
Photo Dražen Eisenbeisser