Jagoda Buić
(1930)
Structure (Etude), 1965-1966
125x125cm
MG-2661
Versatile artist Jagoda Buić studied at the former Academy of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb, at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Art History, as well as costume and set design in Rome and Venice, and textile art and interior architecture in Vienna. After she returned from her studies, she worked as a costume and set designer in the theatres in Zagreb, Split and Osijek, but as of 1962, tapestry became her primary medium of artistic expression. She finds inspiration in traditional female handicrafts and yarn needlework of the Dalmatian hinterland.
Structure from the mid-1960s is an abstract tapestry, minimalist in colour and elementary in its geometric forms (circle, square), however with a rich texture and a clearly visible woven grid network. This woven image is located at an intersection of painting, relief and a three-dimensional illusion characteristic of Op-Art. Gradually, her tapestries become less two-dimensional and more monumental abstract woven three-dimensional objects with visual and tactile values. In 1955, the first textile spatial form is created, after which she exhibits her textile installations at international biennials in Venice, Saõ Paolo and Lausanne.
She has garnered international acclaim with her tapestries of accentuated texture, relief and monumental quality, as well as ambient tapestries-installations. She has shown her works at numerous exhibitions of tapestries in New York, Amsterdam and Madrid, and her works are found in prestigious collections such as the MoMA in New York and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 2010, a retrospective exhibition of her works was organized in the Museum of Arts and Crafts, and in 2019 an exhibition in the “Josip Račić” Gallery – NMMA.
Text: Željko Marciuš, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: from the National Museu of Modern Art's archives © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb