Milivoj Uzelac, Allegory of Music, 1922 (detail)

Milivoj Uzelac
Allegory of Music, 1922 (detail)
oil on canvas
209 x 100 cm
MG-1014

The characteristic, upright rectangular format of the painting Allegory of Music was commissioned for the luxurious salon of Robert Deutsch Maceljski (Zagreb, 1884 – Auschwitz, 1943), one of the most influential collectors and patrons on the Zagreb art scene between 1910 and 1939. Its counterpart, the Allegory of Echo, is shown as part of the One World exhibition, on the other side of the frame. The series executed for the newly built house of the Deutsch family included two more allegories, of beauty and labour, which are twice the size of the former. Robert Deutsch Maceljski, a wholesale distributor of wood, also collected works of old masters, icons, sculptures and objects of applied art.
The muscular, nude body of a woman with her back to the observer stands out against the desolate, abstracted landscape constructed with broad brushstrokes and shades of green, brown and blue. The expressionist treatment of colour adds depth to the painting, and bold brushstrokes contribute to the symbolist sentiment, further emphasising the allegory of music. Uzelac creates a contemporary, urban ancient muse who, like Euterpe, gently touches the flute with her lips. Deep reductionism and flatness of the image are typical of Uzelac’s painting in the early 1920s, dominated by the influence of Cubo-Constructivism and formal Expressionism.
Milivoj Uzelac (Mostar, 1897 – Pasto Sobre, Cotignac, 1977) moved to Zagreb in 1912 where he briefly studied printmaking, then painting. In 1915, in order to avoid military conscription, he escaped to Prague where he studied occasionally and worked in Jan Preisler’s painting studio. He moved to Paris in 1923. Despite having actually lived in Croatian very briefly, Uzelac regularly exhibited at home, and left a particularly marked influence on the new generation of Croatian painters between the two world wars.

Text: Marta Radman, trainee 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

Milivoj Uzelac, Harvest, 1922

Milivoj Uzelac
Harvest, 1922
oil on canvas
147 x 115 cm
MG-1047

Uzelac’s Harvest from 1922 is, like his earlier paintings, influenced by Miroslav Kraljević, Expressionism, Lhote’s late academic Cubism and Cézanne’s art technique. The composition was executed during Uzelac’s stay in Zagreb and heralds a new preoccupation with colour and solid modelling that will culminate in the period after his imminent departure to Paris. The foreground is dominated by the figure of the artist’s wife Nataša, and the already picked fruits of life that the artist is handing over to her. In this painting, Uzelac is reinterpreting the biblical scene of Adam and Eve, but he has reversed the conventional order.
A prominent Croatian painter, graphic artist and illustrator, Milivoj Uzelac was born in Mostar in 1897. After having finished secondary school in Banja Luka, he moved to Zagreb in 1912 to continue his art education in Tomislav Krizman’s painting school. In 1913 and 1914, he studied under Oton Iveković in the Provisional Advanced School of Arts and Fine Crafts. From 1915 to 1919, he moved to Prague to avoid military conscription, where he worked in the studio of mentor and patron Jan Preisler and occasionally attended lectures at the Academy. After World War I, he returned to Zagreb and exhibited energetic compositions and expressionist portraits and nudes at the Spring Salon.
Although he lived and worked in France continuously from 1923 until his death in 1977, Uzelac staged regular exhibitions in Croatia and had a lasting and significant impact on the local art scene.

Text: Lorena Šimić, trainee 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, 2023.

Milivoj Uzelac, Plane Trees, 1933

Milivoj Uzelac
Plane Trees, 1933
oil on canvas,
117 x 89,5 cm
MG-1018

Strong expression and suggestive colour contrasts make the “Plane Trees” one of the most outstanding works from Uzelac’s most prolific phase. During the 1930s, as an already renowned painter in Paris and Cotignac, Milivoj Uzelac masterfully painted numerous scenes from contemporary life with exceptional creative ease, often interpreting the same motif in several variants. Reminiscent of Matisse and Derain, Uzelac achieves an impressive array of cityscapes, but also portraits and nudes in the interior, wherein he combines, in a unique way, mimetic parts of the painting with sections in which he approaches abstraction.
Milivoj Uzelac (Mostar, 1897 – Cotignac, 1977) was educated in Banja Luka, Zagreb and Prague. Although he moved to France in 1923, he continued to regularly exhibit in his homeland and his experiences of Cézanneism, Expressionism and finally Lhote’s academic Cubism had a particularly decisive influence on the new generation of Croatian painters between the two wars. Destinies of Milivoj Uzelac and Vilko Gecan have strongly been intertwined since their early youth, and the complementarity of Uzelac’s creative hastiness and Gecan’s creative discipline was extremely important for both of their work.

Text: Lada Bošnjak Velagić, senior 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

Milivoj Uzelac, A Bridge, 1916 / 1917

Milivoj Uzelac
A Bridge, 1916 / 1917
oil on cardboard
48.5 x 39.5 cm
MG-7097

A Bridge from 1916/17 is one of Uzelac’s earliest paintings but also his most unusual and most compact. His presentation at the Spring Salon in 1917 foreshadowed new tendencies and the imminent rise of modernism that will be a significant characteristic of the informal group of the ‘Prague Four’ and the Salon period from 1919 to 1921. Following in the footsteps of Kraljević and the Cézannesque teachings of his Prague teacher Jan Preisler, Milivoj Uzelac constructs the scenes of a new reality characterized by strong expressivity, general anxiety and suggestive light contrasts.

Milivoj Uzelac (Mostar, 1897 – Cotignac, 1977) was educated in Banja Luka, Zagreb and Prague. Although he permanently moved to France in 1923, Uzelac’s new versions of Cézanneism, Expressionism and finally Lhote’s academic Cubism had a particularly decisive influence on the new generation of Croatian painters between the two wars. He had regular exhibitions in his homeland and maintained close contacts with his colleagues, particularly Vilko Gecan, with whom he was very close both privately and professionally since young age.

Text: Lada Bošnjak Velagić, Senior 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

Milivoj Uzelac, Suburban Venus, 1920

Milivoj Uzelac
Suburban Venus, 1920
oil on canvas
96.5 x 127 cm
MG-1046

In the painting Suburban Venus, Milivoj Uzelac sublimates Cézanne’s and Kraljević’s painterly interpretations into a disturbing scene full of expressionist menace. The gaze and attitude of Uzelac’s Venus, a model from Paris who moved to Zagreb because of him, is full of disdain. She appears resigned wearing torn stockings in a dilapidated studio, surrounded by the inventory of bourgeois pastime such as the Manet-like ribbon around her neck, the mirror, flowers and a book. The hypocrisy and pretence of daily life is additionally emphasized with an emblematic circus or fair scene that is visible through the window. In their aesthetics of the ugly, Uzelac’s engaged and provocative theme, unstable composition, accentuated deformations, juxtapositions of light and dark, are close to the Expressionism of his German and Austrian contemporaries.

Uzelac was educated in Banja Luka, Zagreb and Prague. From a young age, he was very close to Vilko Gecan, both privately and professionally. Although he has lived in France since 1923, he has had a lasting and significant influence on the Croatian art scene, particularly in the interwar period. Despite Uzelac’s fascination with Paris, his youthful obsession with the anxiety of the contemporary moment and especially his ‘collage-like’ fragments connect him to Georg Grosz and the contemporary German Dadaism and the circle around Micić’s avant-garde magazine Zenit. Uzelac’s later paintings are characterized by a ‘return to order’ and an eternal search for harmony and balance.

Text: Lada Bošnjak Velagić, 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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