The exhibition “The Other Ancestral Gallery” by the contemporary visual artist Raffaela Zenoni was opened on 7 December at the Josip Račić Gallery. This exhibition marks the conclusion of the National Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition program in 2023. Branko Franceschi, the director of the National Museum of Modern Art and the author of the visual set-up and foreword in the accompanying bilingual catalogue in Croatian and English, spoke about the artist and her work on this occasion. Raffaela Zenoni completed her painting studies in 2008 at the Studio HC, Independent Academy for Music, Dance, and Art in Bern, and she has shown her work in Switzerland (Bern, St. Moritz, Zürich), Germany (Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart), Belgium (Brussels), Luxembourg (Echternach) and Spain (Gaucin).
For the first presentation of her artistic work in Zagreb, the artist has selected ten powerful, colourful large-scale acrylics on canvas from the eponymous cycle, and an anthropomorphic, monochromatic sculpture that evokes memories of Giacometti’s attenuated figures, according to art historian Branko Franceschi.
(...) The paintings radiate energy and passion, a vitality that we often associate with the privilege of youth but also with individuals who live close to the course of life. Formally speaking, while creating her body of “fictional” portraits, Zenoni is firmly anchored in the visual tradition of High Modernism precisely in the freedom she exhibits in her use of colour and gesture. In closing, it should be noted that the artist’s body of work also includes painting cycles of a completely different tone and intensity, which are not presented on this occasion. At the exhibition, albeit discreetly, one of the anthropomorphic, monochromatic sculptures from her oeuvre is presented in the display window, whose elongated, slender volume evokes memories of Giacometti’s attenuated figures. In a certain way, her sculptures also pay homage to painting. They are created by wrapping canvas around a solid core, and often, the materials are recycled from everyday household items. This solitary sculpture signals that the exhibition does not provide a complete insight into the diversity of the artist’s creative work, which, it is worth noting, includes the creation of painted wooden totems as a connection between her painting and sculptural impulses, as well as her narrative and literary output. The exhibition at the Josip Račić Gallery serves as a kind of welcome and introduction to our cultural circle for the artist who will spend a part of her life in Zagreb and Croatia. A better beginning is hard to imagine. Branko Franceschi, from the text in exhibition catalogue
The exhibition will remain open until 10 January 2024.
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb, 2023