Tag: Stjepan Gračan

Stjepan Gračan, Untitled XXXV (Two Figures), 1977 – 1978

Stjepan Gračan
(1941 – 2022)
Untitled XXXV (Two Figures), 1977 - 1978
polyester, paint
Figure 1: 174 x 66 x 60 cm
Figure 2: 172 x 69 x 67 cm
MG-4488(1-2)

Stjepan Gračan obtained a degree in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1968 and completed his postgraduate studies in the same year. He specialized in monumental sculpture in A. Augustinčić’s Master Workshop from 1969 to 1971. He has been a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb since 1988.
He is one of the co-founders of the art group Biafra, which was active from 1970 to 1978. They organized exhibitions and actions in non-museum spaces and on the streets, advocating expressive and socially engaged figuration with naturalistic techniques and strong deformations. Remaining committed to radical figuration and a message aimed at human conscience and emotions, Gračan created more diverse works in the post-Biafra period, and within the context of destroyed lives, he also shaped animal figures.
At the beginning of his involvement with the Biafra group, he created a series of life-size burned figures. Then, using new materials such as polyester and paint, he created deformed clothed human shells, such as two figures striding forward with lowered hands and melted facial features, dressed in identical long garments, long trousers, and bulky shoes. These contrasting figures, one painted in white and the other in black, are intended to bombard the conscience and provoke spiritual unrest in individuals and larger society in the face of traumatized existential reality.

Text: Tatijana Gareljić, 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

Stjepan Gračan, Untitled XXV, 1976

Stjepan Gračan
Untitled XXV, 1976
polyester, paint
175 x 60 x 92 cm
MG-3985

The ghastly, burnt and enfeebled figure in Stjepan Gračan’s work Untitled XXV, is a paradigmatic concept of Biafra, a group of artists who used the shocking embodiments of victims to violently and fiercely criticise reality, the generally accepted petty-bourgeois conventions, but also the prevailing concept of Abstract art. The victim is embodied in the horrific distortion and dramatic movement, typical of Biafra, an individual who suffers because of politics and other people’s whims, ideologies and interests. In futile suffering, man becomes a monster.
In 1967, Stjepan Gračan (Prugovac, 1941 – Zagreb, 2022) obtained a degree in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. He specialised in monumental sculpture after attending Antun Augustinčić’s Master Workshop, where he remained until 1971. In 1970, he founded the Art Group (Atelier) Biafra, together with sculptors Branko Bunić, Ratko Petrić and Miro Vuco. This group of socially engaged artists who worked in the expressionist style of New Figuration, criticising the contemporary world, was active until 1978. They took their name from the abandoned and devastated wing of the student dormitory in the centre of Zagreb where they lived, and together they staged fifteen group exhibitions. Since most of Gračan’s earlier oeuvre was destroyed in the fire that engulfed his studio in 1979, the tragedy of Gračan’s figures from the Biafra period is best represented by the four sculptures acquired at an earlier date for the NMMU collection. Since 1975, Stjepan Gračan often worked in theatre and television. In 1988, he became a professor of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he later served as dean. He also participated in the founding of the Academy of Arts and Culture in Osijek. He staged as many as 30 solo exhibitions and created 28 public monuments, including the monuments to Vladimir Nazor in Zagreb, August Cesarec in Osijek, and the Frog Monument in Karlovac.

Lada Bošnjak Velagić, 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

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