Tag: Petar Dobrović

Petar Dobrović, Portrait of Elza Szüts, 1917

Petar Dobrović
Portrait of Elza Szüts, 1917
oil on canvas
149.2 x 128.8 cm
MG-1482

Petar Dobrović (Pécs, 1890 – Belgrade, 1942) was a prominent painter who received his formal artistic education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, graduating in 1911. Initially influenced by Impressionism, his stay in Paris from 1912 to 1914 exposed him to the emerging movements of the time, such as Cubism, Cézannism, and Expressionism. Actively involved in avant-garde art circles in Hungary, Dobrović was arrested in Pécs in 1918 due to his political engagement. After a brief return to Paris, he settled in Novi Sad, where he worked as a secondary school drawing teacher, and from 1921 lived in Belgrade, teaching at the School of Fine Arts and exhibiting regularly. He was one of the founders of the group Oblik, which, between 1926 and 1939, advocated for the autonomy of artistic aesthetics and the principles of modernism.
Portrait of Elza Szüts is one of Dobrović’s key works created during a period of strong avant-garde and Expressionist influence. The composition centers on a seated woman whose gaze, directed toward the viewer, conveys a sense of emotional distance and inner tension, achieving striking psychological depth. The decorative background, featuring botanical motifs and a red drapery above the sitter, introduces visual dynamism into the painting. The fusion of modernist tendencies with a pronounced psychological portrayal was a hallmark of Dobrović’s work during this period, laying the groundwork for the more mature and expressive style he would develop in the 1930s.

Text: Luciana Fuks, Curatorial Intern, National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Petar Dobrović, Suburb N., 1914

Petar Dobrović
Suburb N., 1914
oil on canvas, 73 x 97.8 cm
MG-1483

The family of Petar Dobrović (1890–1942) was originally from Slavonia, more precisely Daruvar, but they relocated to Hungary. From 1909 to 1911, Dobrović studied painting in Budapest, where he staged the first public showing of his works at the Museum of Fine Arts in 1911. In his native Pécs, he socialised with writer Miroslav Krleža. He spent the period from 1912 to 1914 in Paris, when he created a series of drawings influenced by Cézanne and Cubism. After returning from Paris, he published prints in a series of prestigious Hungarian magazines and newspapers, such as: Tett, Ma, and Nvugat. In 1919, Dobrović staged solo exhibitions in Zagreb and Novi Sad, and he also showed his work in Paris at the Exhibition of Yugoslav Artists. He stayed in the French capital again from 1926 to 1930. There, he visited exhibitions and wrote critiques for Parisian and German newspapers. Between 1923 and 1925, Dobrović taught at the Art School in Belgrade, and from 1937, he worked as a professor at the Belgrade Academy, which he also helped establish. In Belgrade, he also participated in the founding of the Form (Oblik in Croatian) Art Group in 1926, which, in line with current European trends, promoted a return to realism and the plastic values of painting. His summers spent on the island of Hvar and in Dubrovnik, where he created a series of landscapes and portraits in oil and watercolour techniques are noteworthy. Dobrović’s painting was particularly marked by the colouristic realism of the 1930s.
While Anka Krizmanić’s industrial veduta in the painting The Nova Ves Working-Class Suburb, 1912 is indicated in the lower third of the picture, with the background landscape occupying the other two thirds, Dobrović approaches the same theme by almost entirely filling the surface of the painting with the depiction of the city. The presence of nature is only suggested by a triangular fragment of bluish sky squeezed against the upper edge of the painting. Nevertheless, the impression in both paintings is similar and emphasises the harshness of the expansion of the modern industrial city at the expense of nature, possessing a certain social significance. Although in a different register of warm reddish-orange and brown tones, similar to that of Krizmanić, Dobrović’s palette is muted, and the structure of the painting is marked by the pronounced geometry of architectural cubes.

Text: Phd Ivana Rončević Elezović, 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

Petar Dobrović, Worker (Self-Portrait?), 1913

Petar Dobrović
Worker (Self-Portrait?), 1913
oil on canvas
99.8 x 79.7 cm
MG-1469

Petar Dobrović (1890–1942) studied painting in Budapest from 1909 to 1911, where he has shown his works for the first time at the Museum of Fine Arts in 1911. In his native Pécs, he socialised with writer Miroslav Krleža. He spent the period from 1912 to 1914 in Paris, when he created a series of drawings influenced by Cézanne and Cubism. In 1926 in Belgrade, he was one of the founding members of the Form (Oblik in Croatian) Art Group, and he also participated in the founding of the Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts, where he worked as a professor since 1937. His summers spent on the island of Hvar and in Dubrovnik, where he created a series of landscapes and portraits in oil and watercolour techniques are significant. Dobrović’s painting was particularly marked by the colouristic realism of the 1930s.
Dobrović painted the half-length portrait of a young man in a rather theatrical, almost expressionist manner. The pose and energetic gesture of the character’s raised, outstretched arms, bent at the elbows, contribute to the expressive tension of the picture. The portrait of the Worker (Self-Portrait?) is rendered in a dark register of brown and grey hues, with cubic, broken forms as an echo of the historical avant-gardes, still topical in 1913 when the painting was created. In addition to the penetrating gaze, aimed directly at the observer, the pronounced drama of the composition is achieved by lighting, with a strong contrast between light and dark and diagonal penetrations in the scheme of the composition. The silhouette of the person portrayed is additionally highlighted with a sort of ‘illuminated’ outline that encircles it and emerges from the surrounding darkness of the background.

Text: Ivana Rončević Elezović, Museum Counselor at the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb, 2023
Foto: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb, 2023