Josip Račić, In Front of the Mirror, 1908.
Through the Croatian Art History
From the 19thcentury and continuing to this day, the study of the human figure, whether portrait or nude, has been the basis of academic education. The characteristic way of learning at the nineteenth-century academies is shown by the drawings of head studies base dan a plaster cast by Nikola Mašić and nude studies, also based on a plaster by Jelka Struppy Wolkensperg. The importance of the anatomy studies as comprehended by artists, founders of the Academy, is best shown by the Anatomical Atlas for Artists created by Rudolf Valdec and Bela Čikoš Sesia. Čikoš, as a strict professor, inclined to the traditional teaching, will, however, use a new medium for that time, his own photographs of nudes in order to depict the human figure as accurately as possible. Talented students would find ways for their creativ expression even in such strict exercises.
A group of portraits of artists educated at the Munich Academy anad portraits of Vlaho Bukovac show the same way of painting typical of 19th century , which respected symmetry in the sense of the central location of the person portrayed, using earthy tones with bright parts of the incarnat. The second generation of Munich studentsdefined Croatian modern painting for a long time, if not forever. Familiarity with Manet's painting and fscination with Spanish Golden Age will remain the backbone of most later painters, frpm Ljubo Babić to Josip Vaništ, and even painters of the younger generation (S. Tadić). The second line consisted, as we have already mentioned, of works that influenced different impulses – engaged art, which was advocated at the academy by Krsto Hegedušić. The final chapter of the exhibition belongs to works that follow the set academic rules (J. Čermsk, Marcello, F.X. Winterhalter…) to the painting style itself and therefore respect the strict presscibed canons.