Tag: Đuro Seder

Đuro Seder, Traffic Lights, 1964

Đuro Seder
Traffic Lights, 1964
oil on canvas
101 x 60 cm
MG-2638

Đuro Seder’s painting Traffic Lights from 1964 is a paradigmatic example of the nocturnal side of painting. In his early phase, the artist was so preoccupied with the absurd that the only thing he saw in reality was nothingness, powerful blackness and deep silence. The critics would directly connect Đuro Seder’s black paintings with the views of the Gorgona Group, but the artist himself interprets them as a continuation of his personal, totally spontaneous and completely honest artistic explorations. The titular motif of the traffic light is just an excuse for the artist to build an artistically pure and masterfully executed composition in which only a few white spots, in the midst of a gloomy darkness, bring hope for something new and better.

Đuro Seder (Zagreb, 1927 - 2022) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1951 (mentored by Antun Mejzdić), where he also attended Marino Tartaglia’s advanced course and later worked as a professor from 1981 to 1998. He started his career working as an illustrator and graphic designer, and from the mid-1950s he created dynamic paintings in the spirit of Tachisme. As one of the founders of the Gorgona Art Group (1959 – 1966), he advocated the neo-avant-garde spirit, freedom of art and thought. Seder’s Art Informel-esque non-figurative paintings were initially dark, monochrome, and since 1976 he has been filling them with expressionist gestures and accentuated colourism. In the 1980s, he was one of the pioneers of the New Image painting in Croatian art. After the distinctive neo-expressionist total paintings with thick layers of paint from the 1990s, he later often painted self-portraits in the vein of the New Wild (since 2007) and religious themes. As a highly complex artistic personality, Seder also published poetry.

Text: Lada Bošnjak Velagić, museum advisor 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

Đuro Seder, Self-Portrait with a Self-Portrait, 2007

Đuro Seder
Self-Portrait with a Self-Portrait, 2007
oil on canvas
160 x 130 cm
MG-7493

Đuro Seder (1927-2022) is a multifaceted, universal painter. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (A. Mezdjić, 1951; attended M. Tartaglia’s special course, 1953). He worked as an illustrator and graphic designer, and in the mid-1950s he painted dynamized paintings in the spirit of Tachisme. As a founding member of the Gorgona art group (1959-1966) that brought together artists who shared a spiritual kinship, he advocated a Neo-Avant-Garde spirit, freedom of art and thought, which heralded the New Art Practice that came later. Seder’s oeuvre displays a unique progression from the mute, dark impossibility of painting (Seder’s essay, 1971) in the form of non-iconic Art Informel (Composition, 1961) to black and dark green expressive figuration from the late 1970s that gradually announced the possibilities of painting (Seder’s essay, 1981) and New Image painting (1981), of which he is one of the pioneers. Seder’s Art Informel emanates a logical fact: painting is a non-descriptive composition that refers to nothing outside its materiality. It is devoid of any reference to reality, other than the processes of painting.
Eventually, in the 1990s, Seder developed a distinctive Neo-Expressionism of total painting, as well as a series of ironic and self-ironic self-portraits featuring a healthy dose of humour and, on occasion, joy in the vein of the New Wild (since 2007), and new spiritual-religious paintings.
It is precisely the humorous, playful and (self)ironic note aimed at his own being that Seder reflects in the Self-Portrait with a Self-Portrait (2007), in which he duplicates his figure by doubling the self-portraits using the principle of the mirror image.

Text: Željko Marciuš, 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

Đuro Seder, Still Life, 1977

Đuro Seder
Still Life, 1977
tempera on paper
MG-3969

Đuro Seder belongs to the generation of Croatian artists who were supposed to renew modernist artistic principles after World War II. This expectation was strengthened by the official erasure of Socialist Realism from the state cultural policy, which occurred around the time when young Seder was graduating from the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts (first half of the 1950s). The restoration of artistic modernism proceeded in two directions. In the first, we see the renewal of Bauhaus ideas, while the second follows the principles of Abstract Expressionism and the then current philosophy of Existentialism. After becoming a member of the “Gorgona” Group in 1959, Seder was looking to find his artistic path in abstract and monochromatic paintings, which were content with demonstrating their own materiality: the frame, layers of pigment, canvas and the like. Influenced by Existentialism, and subsequently thanks to the contact of group members with Yves Klein, Seder was known to say that he tried, in the paintings from that period, to show emptiness, not only as a metaphor of human life, but as a concrete personal feeling.

“Still Life” stands somewhere between Seder’s Gorgonian phase and its polar opposite, when he gravitated towards expressive painting with suggestions of the human figure, landscape and the like. Variegated colourway, paint applied in thick impasto layers and strong stylisation of the motif have become the main features of his painting since the early 1980s onwards. Realistic motifs are still not recognisable in this “Still Life”, there are no strong, contrasting colours as of yet, the brush stroke is accentuated, but quieted with large colour surfaces. It is clear the Seder has given up on depicting emptiness, but was still searching for a content to fill it.

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

Đuro Seder, Composition, 1961

Đuro Seder
(1927 - 2022)
Composition, 1961
oil on canvas
110 x 135 cm
MG-4095

Đuro Seder is a multifaceted, universal painter. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1951 (mentored by Antun Mezdjić, 1951; attended Marino Tartaglia’s special course, 1953). He worked as an illustrator and graphic designer, and in the mid-1950s he painted dynamised paintings in the spirit of Tachisme. Being the founding member of the Gorgona art group (1959-1966) that brought together artists of a shared spiritual kinship, he advocated a Neo-Avant-Garde spirit, freedom of art and thought, which heralded the New Art Practice that came later. Seder’s oeuvre displays a unique progression from the mute, dark impossibility of painting (Seder’s essay, 1971) in the form of non-iconic Art Informel (Composition, 1961) to black and dark green expressive figuration from the late 1970s that gradually announced the possibilities of painting (Seder’s essay, 1981) and New Image painting (1981), of which he is one of the pioneers. Seder’s Composition (1961) emanates a logical fact: the painting is a non-descriptive composition that refers to nothing outside its materiality. It is a seemingly completely monochrome, existentialist-Art-Informelist and layered dark visualisation from which occasional red dabs glow. It is devoid of any reference to reality, other than its being stripped bare, and the processes of painting. In the 1990s, Seder developed a distinctive Neo-Expressionism of total painting, as well as a series of ironic and self-ironic self-portraits featuring a healthy dose of humour and, on occasion, joy in the vein of the New Wild (since 2007), and new spiritual-sacral painting.

Text: Željko Marciuš, Museum advisor 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

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