Tag: Đuro Tiljak

Đuro Tiljak, St. Maria Bagno Camp for Displaced Civilians from Lika, Italy, 1944

Đuro Tiljak
St. Maria Bagno Camp for Displaced Civilians from Lika, Italy, 1944
charcoal on paper
430 x 352 cm
MG-3797

Đuro Tiljak was born in Zagreb in 1895. He was conscripted into the army of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1915 and served until 1919, when he returned to Zagreb and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1923, which he had enrolled in before the war. However, before completing his degree, dissatisfied with the painting studies in Oton Iveković’s class, he went to Moscow in 1919. In Moscow, he studied painting under Wassily Kandinsky, but he was more attracted to the French Post-Impressionists, whose works he saw for the first time in the Tretyakov Gallery. In 1928, he embarked on a study trip to Paris. Upon his return, he became close to the artists of the Zemlja Group, with whom he exhibited several times. During World War II in 1942, Tiljak joined the Partisans, serving as a councillor at the inaugural AVNOJ session. He also contributed to the war effort by producing posters and newspapers. In 1944, he, along with several other artists, participated in the evacuation of civilians from Vis to southern Italy.
Tiljak addresses the suffering of civilian populations in World War II in two ways. Firstly, by depicting women bent under the weight of belongings carried in large bundles on their backs, fleeing from death and destruction. The second approach is directly linked to his time in the South Italian camps designated for displaced civilians from Southeastern Europe. Tiljak chooses to portray women engaged in everyday conversation. One of them now carries a different kind of “burden” – a small child. The artistic tools are simple, and the scene relies entirely on the symbolism of motherhood.
Text: Klaudio Štefančić, 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

Đuro Tiljak, Still Life, 1930s

Đuro Tiljak
Still Life, 1930s
oil on canvas
62.8 x 48.1 cm
MG-1296

The meticulously composed Still Life by Đuro Tiljak, painted a few years after his magical Lindens, is strikingly alienated and surreal. Tiljak distils the modest everyday scene into an image featuring a handful of mushrooms and a bowl of apples on the precarious slope of a dilapidated table. Employing a Cézannesque transformation, Tiljak reduces real forms to geometric shapes. He uses thick impasto and modulates colours to highlight volumes. Warm, earthy tones dominate the foreground, while the undefined background is rendered in contrastingly cool hues.
After discontinuing his studies in Zagreb in 1919, Đuro Tiljak enrolled at the Moscow Academy under Wassily Kandinsky. Upon returning to his homeland in 1923, he graduated under Ljubo Babić. Initially, he painted under the influence of the Post-Impressionists and later embraced Magical Realism. He exhibited at the Spring Salons. Following his further studies in Paris in 1928/29, he joined the Zemlja group from 1930 to 1933, basing his compositions on drawing and a limited colour palette. Contrary to his creative dedication to his personal vision, as an art critic during the interwar period, he firmly opposed individualistic art for art’s sake. During World War II, he produced expressive figurative scenes, and later developed colouristic improvisations within landscape motifs that approached abstraction. He also engaged in printmaking. He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and was a member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Text: Lada Bošnjak Velagić, 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

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