Dora Kovačević
(1951)
Wellspring, 1978
wood
82 x 70 x 41 cm
MG-4047
Dora Kovačević graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1974, in the class of Prof. A. Kinert, where she has been teaching since 1997. She obtained a degree in sculpture from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (1977). She designs mobile compositions of simple geometric structure in wood (series of books, windows and doors). She also creates sculptures and reliefs in wood (Cathedral, 1991), wood and metal (series of musical instruments) and laminated paper (Mask, 1985). She also works as a graphic artist. She executed a considerable number of sculptures in public spaces (Jamnička Kiselica, Nova Gradiška, Kostanjevica, Sisak, Zagreb, Dubrova–Labin).
As a pliable biomorphic material, wood has been a challenge for many Croatian sculptors who have achieved, within their oeuvres and sculpture of postmodern tendencies in general, a multiplicity of styles and poetics by combining art forms under the auspices of the New Art Practice. Wood has been adopted because it enables compact rudimentariness of archetypal designs and as a means of dispersing space.
In her wooden sculptures, like her work the Wellspring, Dora Kovačević uses refined abstract forms to open surfaces and closed volumes, thus creating works of vital force and personal suspended perception. Dynamism is established with diagonal and horizontal additions or reductions of the primary mass, establishing a rhythm of full and empty material fragments and space of unconventional symmetry and balance.
Text: Tatijana Gareljić, museum advisor of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb, 2022
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb, 2022