On 10 January, the Josip Račić Gallery presented “The Apple Shrinking” exhibition of the respectable Croatian painter, comic book artist and muralist Stipan Tadić, who has been living in New York since 2018. This is Tadić’s first exhibition in Zagreb since he moved to the United States, and it was presented by the director of the National Museum of Modern Art Branko Franceschi, who is also the author of the exhibition concept and the curator. Tadić emphasised that the selected works are meant to represent a cross-section of his creative work since his move to New York. Numerous guests in attendance have thus had the opportunity to experience the paintings created during his studies at Columbia University, among which is “The Room” – a large-format oil painting from 2021, depicting the artist’s room in East Village that he shared with a Chinese family, which is also one of his two graduation paintings from that prestigious university. “Self-Portrait with Street Food”, on the other hand, is the first painting he created after having just arrived in New York, while the watercolours were inspired by walking through the empty streets of New York during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each displayed work tells its own story and encompasses a period from the artist’s life in New York. Art lovers will be able to enjoy them until 5 February 2023, and among the first to see them was the painter Zlatko Kauzlarić Atač, Tadić’s professor from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, whose class he graduated from in 2011
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: from the National Museum of Modern Art's archives and Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb 2023