Vladimir Becić
Mirjana, 1926.
oil on canvas
100 x 70 cm
MG-863
Vladimir Becić (1886–1954) began his painting apprenticeship at the private school of Menci Klement Crnčić and Bela Čikoš Sesia. In 1905, he entered the Munich Academy in the class of Hugo von Habermann. With colleagues Miroslav Kraljević, Josip Račić, and Oskar Herman, he made the so-called Munich circle of painters who laid the foundations of modern art in Croatia.
While in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, he worked as a cartoonist for Le Rire magazine, and exhibited at the Paris Salon d'Automne. He spent the First World War as a volunteer on the Thessaloniki battlefield, and after the war, he was a war correspondent, photographer, and illustrator for L'Illustration magazine. After the First World War, Becić settled with his family in Blažuj near Sarajevo, where he founded an art colony in 1919. From 1923, he worked in Zagreb at the Academy, remaining there until his retirement in 1947.
At the beginning of the 20s, Becić's painting changed towards a more emphasized purity of expression and plasticity of volume, which he built with a reduced palette of earthy shades of brown, ochre, orange, and red colors. The plastic doctrine of painting, which Becić adopted, was based on distinct tonal modeling. The increasingly important role of color and the visible painter's signature define this period.
The painting "Mirjana" from 1926 shows Becić's daughter in adolescence, depicting the androgynous characteristics of puberty. Becić placed the figure in the room's interior, showing her sitting with her arms folded in her lap. Muted color tones and soft transitions emphasize her facial expression and inner world. In portraits, especially in painting female characters, Becić realized a softened construction of geometric composition, similar to sculptural modeling, creating a kind of formative ideal. The portrait is a supreme achievement in the classical harmony of proportion, static quality, and simplicity.
Text: Marta Radman, curator of the National Museum of Modern art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Marta Radman
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb