The National Museum of Modern Art presents the exhibition Mannerism in 20th and 21st century croatian art. Art historian and critic Iva Körbler dedicated the exhibition to the late academician Tonko Maroević, with whom she shared the same infatuation with Mannerism. Having spent many years studying and researching the material, the author of the exhibition concept found enough elements to decipher, interpret and understand Mannerism and mannerist procedures in the works of Croatian 20th and 21st century artists from the NMMU Collection.
(...)The intention of this exhibition is to open and establish a dialogue regarding the fact that through the application / perspective of mannerist laws and phenomena we can give new or additional meanings to many artworks by Croatian artists, which should be an exciting prospect.
Of course, it would be good to review, through the new magnifying glass, in their entirety or in fragments, the oeuvres of Josip Seissel, Romolo Venucci, Bruno Mascarelli, Albert Kinert, Mirko Ostoja, Ljubomir Stahov, Mila Kumbatović, Mladen Galić, Ljerka Šibenik, Zvonimir Lončarić, Matko Mijić, Momčilo Golub, Marijan Birtić, Danko Friščić, Lovro Artuković, Sanja Sašo, Alem Korkut, Neven Bilić, Denis Krašković, Viktor Popović, Tanja Vujasinović, Zoran Šimunović, Kristijan Kožul, Pavle Pavlović, Sebastijan Dračić, Ivan Fijolić, Ivana Vulić, Marin Marinić, Alana Kajfež, Ivan Midžić, Izabela Hren, and even naïve-surrealists like Franjo Klopotan or the surrealist collages of Nada Vrkljan Križić. Let us not be fooled into thinking that Matko Vekić’s installation “Long Live the Dream of the Revolution – Made in China” does not contain a bloodthirsty mannerist gesture, just as the unstoppable swelling of structures in Siniša Majkus’ linearly thinned sculptures is a stylised denatured artificial nature of the highest order. The ranges of stylistic gesture of Mannerism are gigantic, full of extremes, but clearly decipherable. (...)
Iva Körbler, excerpt from text in exhibition catalogue
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Image: From the exhibition set up / Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb