Nina Ivančić
Sun 12, 1980
oil on canvas
90 x 100 cm
MG-4085
With the painting Sun 12, divided into several uneven fields, Nina Ivančić foreshadows the geometrization that she will fully devote herself to after moving to New York in 1986. Dynamism is achieved by the contrast of warm colours on one side of the painting and cool colours on the other, as well as the thick and clear brushstrokes on the canvas. Sun 12, by the artist who has been formed within the traditional medium of painting in the mid-1970s, at the time of the emergence of new media and materials, is certainly an indicator of her position as one of the leading figures of the New Image painting.
Nina Ivančić was born in Zagreb in 1953. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb under the mentorship of Prof. Šime Perić. After having graduated in 1977, she continued her education in the Master Painting Workshop led by her father Prof. Ljubo Ivančić, and Prof. Nikola Reiser. Soon after, she received the Fulbright Scholarship for the MFA Program in Painting at Columbia University in New York, where she lived and worked from 1986 to 1993. Since 1999, she has been teaching painting at the Arts Academy in Split, and her artistic career has been marked by more than thirty solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions at home and abroad, including the Youth Biennale in Paris (1982) and the Venice Biennale (1986, 1995). Her works are part of numerous private and public collections. She has received a number of awards, including the Binney and Smith Inc. Fine Art Achievement Award (New York, 1987) and Vjesnik’s Josip Račić Fine Art Award (Zagreb, 2003). The artist’s work demonstrates a layered artistic execution that transcends the boundaries of time and space.
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