Tag: Vladimir Becić

Vladimir Becić, Mirjana, 1926

Vladimir Becić
Mirjana, 1926.
oil on canvas
100 x 70 cm
MG-863

Vladimir Becić (1886–1954) began his painting apprenticeship at the private school of Menci Klement Crnčić and Bela Čikoš Sesia. In 1905, he entered the Munich Academy in the class of Hugo von Habermann. With colleagues Miroslav Kraljević, Josip Račić, and Oskar Herman, he made the so-called Munich circle of painters who laid the foundations of modern art in Croatia.
While in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, he worked as a cartoonist for Le Rire magazine, and exhibited at the Paris Salon d'Automne. He spent the First World War as a volunteer on the Thessaloniki battlefield, and after the war, he was a war correspondent, photographer, and illustrator for L'Illustration magazine. After the First World War, Becić settled with his family in Blažuj near Sarajevo, where he founded an art colony in 1919. From 1923, he worked in Zagreb at the Academy, remaining there until his retirement in 1947.
At the beginning of the 20s, Becić's painting changed towards a more emphasized purity of expression and plasticity of volume, which he built with a reduced palette of earthy shades of brown, ochre, orange, and red colors. The plastic doctrine of painting, which Becić adopted, was based on distinct tonal modeling. The increasingly important role of color and the visible painter's signature define this period.
The painting "Mirjana" from 1926 shows Becić's daughter in adolescence, depicting the androgynous characteristics of puberty. Becić placed the figure in the room's interior, showing her sitting with her arms folded in her lap. Muted color tones and soft transitions emphasize her facial expression and inner world. In portraits, especially in painting female characters, Becić realized a softened construction of geometric composition, similar to sculptural modeling, creating a kind of formative ideal. The portrait is a supreme achievement in the classical harmony of proportion, static quality, and simplicity.

Text: Marta Radman, curator of the National Museum of Modern art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Marta Radman
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Vladimir Becić, Vera and Mira, 1924

Vladimir Becić
Vera and Mira
1924
oil on canvas
70 x 65 cm
MG-2348

The joint portrait of his daughters, Vera and Mira, is a paradigmatic example of Magical Realism, where Vladimir Becić accentuates the metaphysical essence of the scene. Becić captures the liveliness of the girls, who have stilled themselves to pose for their father’s affection, by shaping them as softened ‘cubist’ volumes, which he arranges harmoniously within a sparse and undefined space.

Vladimir Becić (Slavonski Brod, 1886 – Zagreb, 1954) began his artistic education at the Crnčić and Čikoš school in Zagreb and continued it in 1905 at the Munich Academy under Hugo von Habermann. It was here that the European line of our modern art, known as the Munich Circle, took shape, comprising Becić, Kraljević, Račić, and Herman. He furthered his studies in Paris and, from 1916 to 1918, served as a war artist and correspondent on the front lines. After the war, he established the first art colony in the country in the idyllic Bosnian town of Blažuj. From his return to Zagreb in 1924 until his retirement in 1947, he taught painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1930, together with Ljubo Babić and Jerolim Miše, he founded the Group of Three. Embracing the poetics of “pure painting,” the Group of Three pursued a mimetic approach and colourism as their stylistic and morphological ideal. With the advent of World War II, Becić’s impulsiveness mellowed, and his tonal palette narrowed. In the final years of his career, he returned to his youthful artistic ideals, adopting an openly Cézannesque style in his paintings.

Lada Bošnjak Velagić, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

 

Vladimir Becić, Soldier, 1917

Vladimir Becić
Soldier, 1917
watercolour on paper
468 x 328 mm
MG-2130

Alongside Josip Račić, Miroslav Kraljević, and Oskar Herman, Vladimir Becić was among the artists who advocated for the principles of “pure painting” at the beginning of the 20th century. Similar to Kraljević, Becić initially studied law but later chose to pursue art. He enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1906 and subsequently attended the art school La Grande Chaumière in Paris from 1909. That same year, he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris and created several iconic works such as “Self-Portrait with Half-Cylinder” and “Still Life.” However, by 1910, he had returned to Osijek, where his parents lived. Because of his artistic and personal ties with Ivan Meštrović, who was considered persona non grata in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy at the beginning of the century due to his advocacy for a South Slavic state, authorities prevented Becić from finding employment. In 1913, he moved to Bitola in Macedonia (then part of southern Serbia) and began working as a drawing teacher. At the onset of World War I, Becić voluntarily joined the Serbian army as a war artist. During the war, he also served as a war correspondent for the Parisian magazine L’Illustration, sending photographs and illustrations from the front lines to Paris. The watercolour ‘Soldier’ was published in a Paris magazine and was likely based on a photographic reference.
It is difficult to find a more poignant military portrait in Croatian art, than this one. Becić avoids extremes – fear, anger, or despair; instead, the soldier’s face remains serene. The calmness of the scene is accentuated by the olive hues of the uniform and the neutral background. Even the helmet, though illuminated, directs attention more to the soldier’s expression than to itself. Yet, the soldier’s gaze and the whites of his eyes – the starkness of these whites being the most dramatic aspect – convey a sense of contemplation and concern inherent in all profound human experiences, particularly those of wartime.

Text: Klaudio Štefančić, senior curator 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

Vladimir Becić, Female Nude With a Newspaper (In the Studio), 1907

VLADIMIR BECIĆ (1886-1954)
Female Nude with a Newspaper (In the Studio), 1907
oil on canvas
100 x 85 cm
MG-850

Vladimir Becić (1886–1954) attended Menci Clement Crnčić’s and Bela Čikoš Sesija’s private painting school in Zagreb. Like Miroslav Kraljević, he also dropped out of law school and in 1905 went to Munich to study painting. Once there, among other things, he enrolled in the painting course of Hugo von Habermann, which was also attended, between 1905 and 1910, by Račić, Kraljević and Herman (the Munich Circle). In 1909, he moved to Paris to study at the Académie da la Grande Chaumière. During his long life, he lived in Zagreb, Osijek, Belgrade, Bitola and Blažuj near Sarajevo, where he also set up a studio. He participated in World War I as a war correspondent and painter for the L’Illustration weekly from the Macedonian Front.

Becić’s painting style ranged from the Munich Realism, Expressionism and Cézanneism, through Magical to Colourist Realism.

In the painting Female Nude with a Newspaper (In the Studio) from 1907, he gives a distinctly modern touch to the theme of a model in the studio by introducing the motif of a broadsheet newspaper in the centre of the right half of the painting. The act of reading the newspaper, as a product of modern civilisation, thus imposes itself as an alternative, equally valuable topic to the one cited in the title of the work itself. Situated in the studio interior, the female nude, the reflection of whose head can be seen in the background mirror, and the dog curled up at her feet, together with the newspaper motif, form the central rectangle of the composition. Painted with long, visible brush strokes, in a dark gamut of colours, the shapes have a clear geometricity, typical of Becić, connecting him to Cézanneism of the “Munich Circle”.

Text: Ivana Rončević Elezović, museum consultant © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb 2022.

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