Milena Lah, From the cycle “The Time of Our Remembrance in Marble and Bronze”, 1973 – 1978

Milena Lah
(1920 – 2003)
From the cycle “The Time of Our Remembrance in Marble and Bronze”, 1973 - 1978
casting, bronze; carving, red marble
72 x 45 x 29 cm
MG-3961

Milena Lah obtained a degree in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1949 and worked as an associate in sculptor Vanja Radauš’s master workshop until 1950. Between 1951 and 1955, she continued her sculptural training in Rome, Florence, Milan and Paris. She participated in many prestigious international sculpture symposia as an established artist.
Early on, Lah created realistic sculptures, after which she aspired to synthesise form and the symbolic expressiveness of material. Inspired by Croatian art and literature, in her oeuvre she looked to combine traditional forms with contemporary sculptural ideas. She paid special attention to the figures of women and children. In her later series, centring mostly on mythological themes, she combined geometric and figural elements. Her sculptures installed in public space represent a titanic segment of her oeuvre, particularly the many sculptures executed in heavy stone blocks in which she modelled intangible universal states and phenomena with ease and extraordinary power. Having used almost all sculpture techniques and materials, she created a prolific oeuvre which, thanks to the purity of elementary forms, metaphors, associations and interactivity, is rightly considered to be one of the most authentic oeuvres in the history of Croatian sculpture.
In one of the series of sculptures from the cycle The Time of Our Remembrance in Marble and Bronze (Red Gods), a bronze head is combined with a red marble block that suggests the space of probable and improbable human existence and movement. It continues with heads made of crystal glass, freed from solid physical connection with the body, merely resting on various marble pillow forms such as the work Cosmic Organ from the cycle “Milestones” created in 1988.

Text: Tatijana Gareljić, 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

Milena Lah, In Honour of Our Lady of Laurana, 1968

Milena Lah
(1920 – 2003)
In Honour of Our Lady of Laurana, 1968
casting, bronze
64 x 40 x 40 cm
MG-6703

Milena Lah obtained a degree in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1949 and worked as an associate in sculptor Vanja Radauš’s master workshop until 1950. Between 1951 and 1955, she continued her sculptural training in Rome, Florence, Milan and Paris. She participated in many prestigious international sculpture symposia as an established artist.
Early on, Lah created realistic sculptures, after which she aspired to synthesise form and the symbolic expressiveness of material. Inspired by Croatian art and literature, in her oeuvre she looked to combine traditional forms with contemporary sculptural ideas. She paid special attention to the figures of women and children. In her later series, centring mostly on mythological themes, she combined geometric and figural elements. Having used almost all sculpture techniques and materials, she created a prolific oeuvre which, thanks to the purity of elementary forms, metaphors, associations and interactivity, is rightly considered to be one of the most authentic oeuvres in the history of Croatian sculpture.
The work dedicated to Our Lady of Laurana is modelled as an abstract portrait head in a three-partite circular-audible form with expanding plate-like round discs (reminiscent of the Renaissance-styled hair). The neck is long, with a wide base and an oval-shaped bottom. The highly polished golden surface lustre furnishes the work with sublime sacral dignity.

Text: Tatijana Gareljić, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Milena Lah, Moon, Moonlight, Seagulls I. – IV., 1970.

Milena Lah
Moon, Moonlight, Seagulls I. - IV., 1970.
tempera, paper
65 x 52 cm
MG-8520, MG-8521, MG-8522, MG-8523

In the sculpture of Milena Lah (1920 - 2003), the seagull motif represents both the formal and sub-stantive dividing line. After having graduated from the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts in 1949, this sculptress spent the first 15 years working within the boundaries of realistic sculpture, only to de-vote herself more decisively to formal experiments in the first half of the 1960s. Under the influ-ence of Henry Moore, Lah freed herself from imitating reality, and as early as the late 1960s, she created sculptures with forms composed exclusively of dynamic and rhythmic alternations of con-cave and convex shapes (Flight of the Seagull, 1969, Seagull, 1968). This alternation of the concave and the convex can also be seen in paintings that Lah executed at the same time. Although she abandoned Realism on the formal level, Lah kept the connection between her sculptures and the natural and cultural phenomena on a symbolic level – through the titles of her works and exhibi-tions. Early on in her career, it was first the ethnic heritage of the Istrian peninsula (local legends) or the medieval heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bogomils, standing tombstones), while her focus shifted to natural phenomena (seagulls, the moon) during the 1960s, and eventually to motifs that try to combine mythology and science fiction. The paintings on view here belong to the period of the sculptress’ activity in which she, still fascinated by everyday life – flight of the seagull, moonlit night – tries to breathe new life into old sensations. She largely succeeds in this, creating a wavy composition wherein she brings the black, white, gold and different shades of blue into an unusual relationship. Milena Lah’s art is also characterised by working outdoors, in a natural environment. She participated in two dozen sculptural symposia in Croatia and abroad, so it is not surprising that her sculptures can be found in many public spaces in Croatia and abroad.

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

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