Miljenko Stančić
Trip to Slovenia, 1966
oil on canvas
65 x 81 cm
MG-6705
Miljenko Stančić (1926 – 1977) was a pioneer and the most prominent painter of post-WWII Surrealism and Fantastic art in Croatia that is based on tradition, precise tone modulation and the legacy of old masters (G. de La Tour, J. Vermeer from Delft, P. de Hoh), as well as the painter of pure perception – that is, Josip Račić. With his exceptional skill and the synthesis of the old and the new, Stančić created a unique style in the manner of the so-called museum, anachronistic painting. His oeuvre between the early 1950s and the late 1970s features personal metamorphoses (vedutas of Varaždin, fantastical transformations of human figures in poetic interiors, erotic contents) and subdued gammas illuminated by “animated lighting and an increasingly virtuosic and melancholy palette” (M. Krleža). He obtained a degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1949, and in printmaking in 1951, after having attended T. Krizman’s advanced graphic art school. He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts between 1960 and 1977. Stančić’s Trip to Slovenia (1966) is a work that perceives the hallucinatory dreamwork reflected by simulations that always point to something other than what is seen and are, at the same time, close to the experiential inhabiting of the “I-form” and distant from it. The floating dream phantasmagorias, in which children’s bodies defy gravity, by the painter in whose “personal mythology light is synonymous with painting” (I. Zidić), may represent dreamlike memories of childhood (and the artist’s brother). Stančić was a member of the Group of Five, and from the 1960s onwards he also participated at the exhibitions of the Belgian group of artists Fantasmagie.
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
