ARCHIVE · 2023 - Umjetnička galerija Dubrovnik

ARCHIVE · 2023

BRANKO KOVAČEVIĆ
(1911. – 1988.)
From Dubrovnik Collections

14. 12. 2023. – 24. 3. 2024.

AUTHOR AND CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION: Rozana Vojvoda

EXPERT ASSOCIATE AT THE EXHIBITION: Vesna Čučić

Women from Dalmatinska zagora, 1962

Dubrovnik Constructions, 1958.

Drawing on a boundless energy, Branko Kovačević took part in various spheres of cultural life in which he indebted the Dubrovnik milieu. He was the Dubrovnik Museum of Modern Art’s first curator, having taken part in its founding with Kosta Strajnić, its director, from 1947 to 19528, he was one of the initiators of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival. President of the Dubrovnik branch of the Croatian Artists’ Association, he was also into theatre set design and poster production, he wrote art reviews, forewords to exhibitions, various essays, made public appearances speaking forthrightly about the fundamental problems artists have to face in their everyday work. Although in his painting researches Branko Kovačević is to an extent a detached figure in the Dubrovnik setting, mostly unjustly labelled as eclectic because of his stylistic heterogeneity, the Mediterranean and Dubrovnik context is essential in any study or evaluation of his works, whether we are talking of depictions of the stone shell of Dubrovnik that the artist interprets with a constructivist lexis; of the pictures of city and island houses and gardens that in the seventies or the first half of the eighties were essential acquisitions for Dubrovnik households or of melancholy interiors with countless references to some past periods. Interpretations of the oeuvre of Branko Kovačević via his most important thematic concerns in given periods – dialogue with the heritage of Modernism, understanding of form and space, as well as, particularly, through his attitude to the Dubrovnik setting; these are the main preoccupations of this exhibition, which takes in works from his earliest period up to those done just before the end of his life. - Rozana Vojvoda

Firenca, 1986

Red Mountain, Arizona, 1964

Biography:

Branko (Branimir) Kovačević was born on November 30, 1911, in Zadvarje, Dalmatinska zagora. While still a small child, he moved with his parents to Trieste, subsequently to Rijeka, Vis and Split. While in Split he attended high school and Emanuel Vidović’s painting school in parallel. From 1934 to 1938 he studied in the Art Academy in Belgrade, in the class of Ljubo Ivančić, via whom he got to know the painting of the Munich circle, as well as in the class of Ivan Radović, who acquainted him with Parisian modern painting. After the conclusion of his education, he returned to Split and hired a studio, where he worked concentratedly on his painting. In 1938 to 1939, he was one of the exhibitors at the big show “Half a century of Croatian art”, his introduction into contemporary Croatian painting. From 1940 to1943 he taught art at a high school in Nova Gradiška. Taking part in the anti-fascist movement, he moved to Split, in 1944 to Vis and then to Šibenik. After the liberation, in Split and in other towns, ending with Zagreb, Kovačević coorganised partisan artist exhibitions, at which he took part himself. In 1945 he arrived in Dubrovnik, in which he was to live the rest of his life. In concert with Kosta Strajnić he worked on the founding of the Dubrovnik Museum of Modern Art, of which he was the first curator and, from 1947 to 1952, the director. Kovačević was also one of the founders of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival and was president of the Association of Visual Artists in Dubrovnik. He was also into set and poster design; he published articles, essays and art criticism. His works are in the collections of all Croatian museums concerned with modern art, he exhibited worldwide, particularly intensively in Italy, where he won the attention of the reviewers. A monograph of the painter written by art critic Josip Depolo was published in 1986. In his work, Branko Kovačević went through various phases, from Expressionism to Intimism; in his research into painting he made free interpretations of various historical styles, such as Cubism and Constructivism. His melancholic and atmosphere-laden interiors, which he did in the post-war years and particularly intensively in the last years of his life are, alongside the interiors of Emanuel Vidović, his first teacher, the very acme of this genre of painting in Croatian art. He died on October 4, 1988, in the spa town Krapinske Toplice.

NATIVITY SCENE IN THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART DUBROVNIK

Atrium of the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik

collaboration of the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik and Natural History Museum Dubrovnik

Authors: Ivona Šimunović and Dubravka Tullio

ZORAN ŠIMUNOVIĆ
GROWING UP

Curator: Branko Franceschi

8.11.-10.12.2023.

Šimunović is literally im¬mersed in his own mental space, and despite living in one of the most beautiful domestic landscapes, he has become an atypical painter for his generation, of internal, spiritual, and, above all, emo¬tional spaces. In the latter, I find the fundamental reason for his success. (…) I believe that Zoran Šimunović’s comprehensive success can be explained by his understanding of the painting as a representative (respectable, typical and attractive) object that appeals to the sen¬sory and emotional potential of the observers.

DO ASTRONAUTS NEED ART 1, 2020, oil on canvas

Šimunović primarily works in the traditional technique of oil on canvases of ambitious dimen¬sions, in line with the aspirations, perhaps even subconscious ones, of the observer who may consider incorporating it in their daily personal space. Another appealing aspect is the restrained palette of pastel colours, balanced muted tones applied with even, subtle brushstrokes. There is no visual element that disrupts the meditative atmosphere of the painting. The composition unfolds from the centre of the canvas towards the uniformly coloured surfaces of the edges, making the content easy to perceive. The content itself balances between figuration and abstraction, bridg¬ing the significant gap between the two tendencies that marked the art of the previous century. On one hand, Šimunović addresses the average observer’s need to recognise the depicted motif, and on the other hand, he animates the space around the motif with a lan¬guage developed by abstract painting. He incorporates into the composition a series of visual events using the very material of ex¬ecution, such as dripping, or develops them within the composition as separate sections and elaborated surfaces, making the painting visually and, consequently, perceptually rich.

DOES DOLLS HAVE EMOTIONS, 2022, oil on canvas

The motifs in Šimunović’s paint¬ings are not constructed according to Euclidean geometry, nor do they appear in a space aligned with linear perspective. They are two-dimensional, floating in a space that defies gravity, and their interrelationships and sizes are entirely arbitrary, determined by the painter’s inner vision. Although modern in technical execution and colour, Šimunović’s compositions evolve in a symbolic space of almost archaic origin. In line with the arbitrary format of motif realisation, whether they are taken from life, the imagery of popular culture, or a landscape, their colours do not necessarily match the original. Like in a dream, everything adheres to the internal rules generated by each individual situation.

GROWING UP, 2022, oil on canvas

BIOGRAPHY:

Zoran Šimunović entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Široki Brijeg in 2008, and graduated in 2013 in the class of Professor Antun Boris Šval¬jek. He then got the position of curator at the City Museum of Vukovar, then manager of the Slavko Kopač Gallery at the City Museum of Vinkovci.
With his critically acclaimed works and exhibi¬tions, Zoran Šimunović is today one of the most recognized and sought-after contemporary Cro¬atian artists. He exhibited in galleries and muse-ums in Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Austria and Hun¬gary; his works are in the public collections of four Croatian museums. In 2019, he was the only visual artist selected by the prestigious American design magazine Regard Magazine for the feature “Croatia full of life”, then in 2022, the prestigious Geo France magazine covered his artistic work.
The artist attributes his success to the motiva¬tion and determination that guided his work and efforts in recent years.

GROWING UP, 2023, digital art, print on plexiglass, light box

BORIS CVJETANOVIĆ _ SUMMER HOLIDAYS 1985 – 1997

Selection of works, exhibition layout: Boris Cvjetanović, Petra Golušić
Curator: Petra Golušić
28.9. – 29.10.2023.

NerežišćA _ Brač_ 1985_ silver print Narežišća, 1994, silver print

Boris Cvjetanović is doing a cycle relating to holiday-making periods. The exhibition is a selection from the cycle, and consists of eighty-one black and white analogue photographs taken between 1985 and 1997. Lines of latitude and longitude are sequenced in tune with the determinants inscribed into the artist’s movements: Brač, Pelješac, Zadar, Dubrovnik, Bibinje, Korčula and so on. The adventurousness of the artist is set within the fragility of the work of art. The registration is contemplative and essential. The photographer notes the place of the world, the internal and external life of the human being. The author experiences, vigilantly tracks, acutely observes, and with ease (in an unobtrusive quiet) and in wisdom (gently and strongly) draws out a universal cartography. Art is a cognitive, ethical and aesthetic attitude to the world. Speech is reduced to a semantic aesthetic process. Scenes are the pronouncements of the original insight.
Peace and calm announce themselves and the art of the portrait simply unfolds – the pith and marrow of life and presence.

Škrip, Brač, 1986, silver print

Life is seen with cognition and recorded with a striking aesthetic. That of exceptional quality, rooted deep down in the general, draws the glance into the frame. The slow course of Mediterranean events is mapped. In the outlines and on the sharp edges, in details and close up, we read the iconography of regions of Earth. The Mediterranean is gathered in physiognomies, landscape, secular and holy things, attributes and symbols, interiors and exteriors. It is unconditionally permeated, exists with itself and the other, respects heritage and tradition, truth is sought and found, freedom pronounced in quiet. A simple and modest life is lived. It breaks off for the hermitage and comes back to mankind. Goodness and trust are found. The absolute is perceived. And much more than all this, Cvjetanović masterfully records.
The human being and the world are addressed with thinking and understanding.
In the case of Cvjetanović, it is a primordial presence. The book of the ontology of man and world is opened wide.
The spiritual and vital essence of the human being is represented. The work expresses humanity. The cycle has come into being in a difficult spiritual situation, a period of transition from one political system to another, in the period of the Homeland War. Space is read at multiple levels as pacific region necessary for the survival of the human, for universal survival. Boris Cvjetanović passes through various situations, lingering where he needs to stand to document the essence. Hegel says of the artist that ‘he puts into consciousness the highest interests of the spirit’, which in the work of the author is clear and obvious.
Sensibility is intellectual, and intellectuality sensible. What is invisible becomes visible. There is a mapping of the encounter with truth, truth as basis or being of the world, encounter with the truth of the essence of the human being.

Buga, Škrip, Brač, 1995, silver print

Freedom is soundlessly glorified. This is about a possibility that is perceived, respected and which is addressed simply and with dignity.

The cognition of light is obvious. The being in ordinariness and humility is expressed. The blessedness of modesty is shown in essence. What happens is a serious and deep marking of ordinariness (in the sense of its ultimate magnificence) and of gratitude (for the fundamental).
The constitution of the being of the work of art reposes in the objectivisation of the subjective view of the individual as the universal.
This master of the photograph dedicates the majority of his shots to Brač, where he spends summers with his family, and to Pelješac, whence he hails. He portrays his wife, daughter and relatives in spontaneous scenes as well as when posing for the camera lens. He frames the everyday life of mother and child at various ages. This is a statement of the freedom, harmony and unity of human life. A mysterious penetration into the refinement of private life. Photography is a miraculous phenomenon. It is used to express relationship and the communication of silence with loved ones. Understanding of silence is there in the reciprocal gaze and also through the lens. This concerns the family, the nucleus of life. In his slow course, the artist continuously approaches this theme. It is possible to follow the movement of change in the exquisite portraiture. The lens records the events of life and the unobtrusive posing in summer. Infinity is visible: in the eyes, on the faces, movements, standing still. It can be read off in scenes of details of the world of the intimate space that becomes the process of work in general. Respect for life underlines the immense riches of internal space and truth.
The philosophy of Cvjetanović’s art is to articulate the inner energies of the world of objects. In it the shaping of thoughts takes place, presenting the existence of simplicity and being in the essence with aesthetic phenomena.
The portrait art of Brač and Pelješac inheres in the unmetalled road, the deserted football field with two empty goals. The photographer captures signs with no meaning. Scenes that are niches signify the abstracted places in which a universal thread is seen more directly. Here the meaningless/the ultimately meaningful are explored. Their ever-present existence is possible everywhere and it is sacred. They tell of the mode of possibility as essential mode of survival of the human being.
The frames belong to the flower poets, people in the local café posing in a relaxed manner, a friend's wedding, children on the street... The cycle includes the procession of St Margaret in Nerežišće, of St Anne in Donji Humac, night-time bowling. Cvjetanović is in Žuljana in which we see a fig tree, a bowl with a cactus, portraits of locals also take place in their homes. Peace is encoded on their faces, and chiaroscuro is sketched out.
It is possible to track the artist’s journey during which in Dubrovnik, on Korčula, Pelješac and Brač and elsewhere he registers his friends, people who are the leaders in the creation of contemporary Croatian art. The spontaneity or awareness of the people photographed tells of thinking, communication, exchange, suffusion and other things, freedom and truth. Primal value is framed transparently.
A confessional log is formed. The frame is the truth of the moment.
Then there is the phenomenon of the ease of the observer. The framing is balanced and attentively devised; it has a kind of order and proportion. Infinity is represented in the pronouncements of silence. Heidegger says that the dwelling place of thought is a place of silence. The expression is fine, rare, harmonious, significant, marvellous, elevated/degraded, human. In the work forms are established by the process of regularity, and harmony. The photographer is calm and collected. He records summers, meditatively and essentially, in the thread of the universal zone.
Light is always powerfully touched, experienced and impressed (introduced) into the frames. The sacred is read. Observed and known, and accordingly so set down it enables an infinity of looking.
One exists in the ‘zone’ of being.
Generally speaking, this artist’s oeuvre is a demonstration of the outstanding quality of this country’s visual art, going far beyond its framework. Works of art are ‘international objects of the productive process, and internationality, of course, means the relation between sign and being…’ (Max Bense)
Extreme immediacy, absoluteness and primariness take place.
‘The mind that is really still is astonishingly active, alive, potent—not towards anything in particular. It is only such a mind that is verbally free—free from experience, from knowledge. Such a mind can perceive what is true, such a mind has direct perception which is beyond time.’ (Jiddu Krishnamurti) The art of photographing is an essential process – as witness the substantial work of Boris Cvjetanović, truthful in itself.

NerežišćA _ Brač_ 1985_ silver print

BIOGRAPHY

Boris Cvjetanović was born in 1953 in Zagreb, in which in 1976 he graduated from he fine art section of he Education Faculty. From 1976 to 1984 he worked as a restorer in the Croatian Conservation Institute in Zagreb, and in 1981 started his professional dealings with photography. In the same year he started working for Studentski list in which in 1987 he became photography editor. His work has been published in international publications and books about photography, in for example the book Echoes – Contemporary Art at the Age of Endless Conclusions by Francesco Bonami (The Monacelli Press, New York, 1996) and is to be found in museums, galleries and private collections in Croatia and all around the world. Photo monographs about the artist: Society (Petikat, Zagreb, 2022), Nature and City (Petikat, Zagreb, 2018), City (Petikat, Zagreb, 2016), A New Heaven (Petikat, Zagreb, 2003) and Scenes Devoid of Significance (Idea Imago, Zagreb, 1995). He is the recipient of prizes from the 1st Tokyo International Photo-Biennale 95 (Tokyo, 1995); Grand Prix of the Croatian Photography Exhibition of 1997, Zagreb; Homo Volans ’97 (Zagreb, 1996) and others. Cvjetanović, together with Ana Opalić, represented Croatia at the Venice Biennale in 2003. He has exhibited in numerous solo shows and collective exhibitions and other events at home and abroad. He is a member of the Croatian Association of Independent Artists. He lives and works in Zagreb and Žuljana.

Tonči Jure Ivica i Buga _ Nerežišća _ Tonči Jure Ivica and Buga _ Nerežišća_ 1991 _ silver print

ANDY WARHOL: I'M FROM NOWHERE - works from the collection of the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborce

21.9.2023. - 29.10.2023

Curators: Michal Bycko, Martin Cubjak and Jelena Tamindžija Donnart

The exhibition of one of the founders of pop art in the world, Andy Warhol, is organized by the Dubrovnik-Neretva County in cooperation with the Dubrovnik Art Gallery and the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art from Slovakia. Andy Warhol’s works from the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art will be exhibited at the exhibition, including photographs and silkscreens on paper and canvas. The exhibition maps, presents and professionally displays not only the life and works of Andy Warhol, but also current trends in visual art and culture, the influence of the artist’s ethnic origin on his work, the influence of pop-art on current art and related topics. The curators of the exhibition are Michal Bycko, Martin Cubjak and Jelena Tamindžija Donnart.

Andy Warhol was born on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh in a family of Ruthenian immigrants from the village of Miková near Medzilaborc. He had two older brothers: Paul (born 1922, died 2014) and John (born 1925, died 2010). His father, Andrej Varchola, or Andrew Warhol (born in 1886, died in 1942) was a worker and miner, and his mother, Júlia Varcholová, or Julia Warhola (born in 1892, died in 1972), instilled in her children respect for religion, family and traditional values. They lived very modestly and regularly went to Greek Catholic mass celebrations.

Thanks to Andy Warhol’s brothers John and Paul and Fred Hughes as representatives of the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York, and on the initiative of Dr. sc. Michal Byck, the museum in Medzilaborac was founded as a transregionally specific institution of the museum-gallery type, and deals with current trends in contemporary art and especially the life and work of Andy Warhol.

The founding of the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborac was preceded by the activities of Dr. sc. Michal Byck, first in the Small Gallery of the Friends of Art Club connected to the branch of Visual Art of the National School of Art and later in the organization of the Andy Warhol Society in Medzilaborac. During the existence of these institutions, the people involved, despite the former political regime, managed to collect a lot of different materials and authentic documents that are now part of the Foundation’s collection and the Museum’s archives.
The Ministry of Culture officially founded the Museum in 1991, and since April 1, 2002, it has been taken care of by the higher territorial unit of Prešov self-government.
The Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborac (MMUAW) was founded in 1991 as the first museum in the world dedicated to the king of pop art. Today, the museum is a specific transregional institution of the museum-gallery type, which mainly deals with current trends in contemporary art and especially with the life and work of Andy Warhol.
The museum conceptually maps, presents and professionally displays not only the life and works of Andy Warhol, but also current trends in visual art and culture, the influence of an artist’s ethnicity on his work, the influence of pop art on current art and related topics.

EKREM YALCINDAG
NATURES

29.7.2023. - 17.9.2023.

Curators: Heinz Peter Schwerfel & Jelena Tamindžija Donnart

Beauty can be artificial, especially when it is artistic. In 2023, Istanbul and Frankfurt-based artist Ekrem Yalcindag created a new art series entitled “Nature” — even if his works essentially don’t have much in common with conventional portrayals of natural beauty. His artwork is a representation, rather than a reproduction of nature — its glimpses transformed into works of art, but never their focus. Nature is translated into art in the artist’s highly personal idiom that has long transcended the dichotomy between figuration and abstraction. A fan of throwing together disparities, Mr. Yalcindag skillfully fuses intellectual, conceptual art with his perfectly executed technique.

Heinz Peter Schwerfel

Like the ships on the Bosporus that constantly change the observer’s view with their movement, the new series of works of Ekrem Yalcindag follows the pattern of placing us in medias res, in the midst of things, at the centre of the action, where forms come into and exit from the pictures. In this way the forms seem to be going on with their life even outside the frame of the picture, telling us of the original Romantic idea about our own communion with nature and the mirroring of our soul and thinking in it. Yalcindag is successful in leading us on this journey, suggesting the path with his circles, which are like footsteps trodden in the sand that lead us off into parts unknown.

Jelena Tamindžija Donnart

Biography
Ekrem Yalcindag, born in Turkey in 1964, lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Istanbul. His artworks are represented internationally in renowned collections of modern art such as in Istanbul Modern, Sammlung Goetz, Munich, in the EPO Art Collection, Munich/ Den Haag, the Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich or in the Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden. After his first art studies in Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir (1990-1993), he continued his artistic career at the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, in the years 1994 to 1999, with Hermann Nitsch (his mentor) and Thomas Bayrle. Here, Ekrem Yalcindag starts drawing using the impasto color application followed, in 1994/95, by the development of the first blossom motifs. His art studies in the Frankfurter Palmen- garten soon allowed him to find the characteristic abstract blossom forms for his paintings. And in the same year, he then discovered the Da Vinci brush 1570 size 0 with which he now creates all his artworks. In 1997, the painter created his first Tondos as well the first Camouflage works. Three years later, Ekrem Yalcindag extensively started dealing with ornaments and geometric elements. During his atelier scholarship in the Künstlerhaus Schloss Dalmoral, Bad Ems, he transfers the pattern of paving tiles onto canvas. Here, the first work of the Schloss Balmoral set is created. Eventually, in 2006/7, he refocuses on Tondos. He names the resulting works “Impressions from the Street”, hereby adhering to the French impressionists. One year later, in winter, for the first time, he subsequently designs a mural at a Berliner kindergarten in the Griechischen Allee. He paints further murals for the Kai Middendorff Galerie in Frankfurt (2009), Museum Morsbroich in Leverkusen (2009), Istanbul Modern (2010), the Kunst- and Kulturstiftung Opelvillen Rüsselsheim (2016) or Borusan Contemporary (2010 / 2021). In 2014, engagements with Alexander Rodtschenko and Barnett Newman brought the triptych “Red Yellow Blue” to life. In the new chemistry building of the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen he creates his up to date biggest mural: the eight walls of the staircases covered in red, yellow and blue color areas. In 2015, Yalcindag paints additional monochromatic works. had been using to frame his flower motifs, and - inspired by Henri Matisse’s silhouettes - he starts venturing with colorful variations of his line framework. In Red Yellow Blue (2016), he then breaks the strict, geometric separation of color surfaces and intertwines these three primary colors on one canvas. For the artwork set Colored Blacks (2017), Yalcindag returns to the round-shaped format. However, he reduces the color palette to hues of black. And only upon closer inspection, the viewer can perceive the diversity of color hues rendered in the concentrically arranged circles. Continuing to explore the possibilities of monochrome, in the following year, he created works in the colors red and green (e.g. Red Red Red, 2018). Starting in 2018, he produces the works ti- tled Infinity, which appear for the first time in the Kai Middendorff Galerie. With the help of subtle nuances in the horizontal lane, he creates color gradients capable of opening imaginary spaces and convey the impression of infinity. In 2020, Ekrem Yalcindag applies the principle of his color gradient technique, developed for the Infinity-Series, on his round-shaped formats. The perception of spatial depth was achieved by the radial arrangement of the chromatic gradients. In 2022, he transfers his principle of acrylic murals onto panels for the very first time. The less corporeal color material here- by allows a largescale execution of the vegetal ornament. And with that, Sunrise (2022) is created, a Tondo with a diameter of 3.3 meters and a red-orange color-gradient. In his youngest artworks, Ekrem Yalcindag implements his former work representing forms of nature, while dramatically expanding his technical repertoire: in gigantic formats he combines his typical delicate oil painting technique with wood and screen printing. These wall-filling artworks can be seen publicly for the first time in the Kunstforum Wien.

CATALONIA FROM ABOVE
YANN ARTHUS-BERTRAND

8.7.2023. - 20.8.2023.

Gallery Dulcic Masle Pulitika

Curator: Jelena Tamindžija Donnart

Yann Arthus Bertrand, Barcelona

There are as many landscapes as observers. We look at the same facts, but each of us builds a perceived reality in our own mind. How many Catalonias are there? As many as those who gaze upon it. This exhibition reflects the gaze of Yann Arthus-Bertrand as he observes the Catalonian landscape from the air. So do not look for the Catalonia you might already know; find the one that he saw. Do not look for an exhaustive, Cartesian account either, because this exhibition forms part of an impressionist painting. Each photo is a brushstroke.
Yann Arthus-Bertrand focused his gaze on this specific space that is Catalonia. He’s done it on very different scales, from the extensive landscape to the small phenomenon of the human tower raised by the castellers. Always from the sky. Always from the disconcerting angle of observation provided by aerial vision, because our eyes usually wander when we’re at ground level.
Catalonia is a small territory, covering just over 32,000 km2. Yet it is extremely diverse. The coastline, the Pyrenees and a group of unexpected plains interspersed across a highly uneven relief produce varied shapes and harbour very different local climates, resulting in a multicoloured mosaic. In the same day you can ski, go to the beach and wander across an endless plain. It is also an ancient land, like the rest of Europe. With each step an Iberian, Roman, Islamic or Carolingian memory is discovered. Or a sample of Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical or contemporary genius. Monuments punctuate the landscape, which Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s aerial camera perceives and captures, resulting in diverse photos of a highly diverse territory.
How you interpret all this is up to you. We suggest you take a look at Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s gaze and perceive your own landscape. Yours will be another perception of Catalonia, and it won’t be the last. Ideally you will want to go see it with your own eyes. You will be very welcome.

Author of the text: Ramon Folch

Biography:
Yann Arthus-Bertrand (Paris, 1946) is a photographer passionate about animals and natural spaces. His vocation is to capture the beauty of the Earth with images to make people understand the importance of its conservation. Thanks to this commitment, in 2009 he was appointed Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). "The Earth from Above", "The Earth from the Air: 365 Days", "Horses"... are examples of books and exhibitions that reflect his concerns. He is also the author of the documentary series "Seen from Heaven" broadcast in 40 countries or the film "Home", seen by around 450 million people in more than 100 countries.

JOSIP TROSTMANN
The Fiery Palette of Pino’s Autumn
A Retrospective exhibition

13.6.2023. - 23.7.2023.
Curator: Andrea Batinić

Josip Trostmann is the most essentially Dubrovnik of contemporary painters, one who, thanks to his subjects and his typological authenticity, has taken an important place in the overall panorama of Croatian visual art today. In six decades of mature work and exhibiting, Josip PinoTrostmann has created an extremely stable painterly profile and an entirely distinctive, identifiable artistic oeuvre. Loyalty to the classical media (oil on canvas, watercolour and gouache), colourism and gesturality, a lyrical approach to landscape and dynamic elements are the familiar leitmotifs of all his phases and cycles. Trostmann has not evinced his rooting in his native space in a manner identical to that of any other of our well-known artists. Quite the contrary; he has worked in his own way, homegrown and recognisable, making use of the experience and knowledge accessible to him. How his predecessors have influenced the work of the artist, the manner in which he spent his childhood, what he has learned from the world, and how (the local – Medović and Dulčić, and the foreign – the French post-Impressionists, the Fauves and the German Expressionists) and what he has made of himself with work and study: all this clearly shows the work of Josip Trostmann to have derived from everything that – by birth and origin – has made him what he is, the whole of his work being a pure condensate of his life. - Andrea Batinić

BIOGRAPHY
Josip Pino Trostmann was born on June 9, 1938, in Dubrovnik. As a boy he would colour in the sketches of his father, a builder. He spent his childhood in his native town, and attended the Portrait Evening Classes given by famed Croatian painter Ivo Dulčić. He prepared for entrance into the Academy of Fine Arts by taking lessons from Milovan Stanić and Vojislav Stanić. From the conservator Kosta Strajnić he got materials about Modernism, particularly about French painting, and remained one of Kosta’s lifelong friends. In 1963 he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, class of Ivo Režek and Đuro Tiljak, and became a member of the Croatian Association of Visual Artists. He rejected the invitations of Hegedušić and Režek to attend post-graduate course and to take part in their master workshops, returning to Dubrovnik instead. He had his first solo exhibition in Dubrovnik. In addition to painting, he was also an educator, working as a teacher until his retirement, first in primary school, and subsequently in secondary education, in the Art and Design School. He is one of the direct successors of the tradition of Dubrovnik colourism as set up by Dulčić, Masle and Pulitika. Trostmann paints local motifs and lyrical still life subjects, moving in terms of style between Impressionism and Expressionism. In 2013 from the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts he won a prize for achievements in the field of art. In 2022 he received the City of Dubrovnik Prize for Lifetime Achievement. Extensive and important monographs have been written about Josip Pino Trostmann by Academician Tonko Maroević (2004) and Tea Trostmann MSc (2013). He lives and works in Dubrovnik. Josip Pino Trostmann has exhibited solo and in numerous collective shows.

HOMMAGE TO TONKO MAROEVIĆ
poetic graphic map

18.5.2023. -.4.6.2023.

Exhibition layout: Jelena Tamindžija Donnart

This poetic-graphic map is a valuable donation by Božo Biškupić to the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, and was created as a tribute to the distinguished academician Tonko Maroević. The graphic map contains a sonnet wreath by Luka Paljetko, a great Croatian poet, academician and long-time friend of Tonko Maroević, as well as works by renowned Croatian artists.

Artists:

Nevenka Arbanas; Ena Bajuk; Biserka Baretić; Tomislav Buntak; Maja S. Franković; Kažimir Hraste; Josip Ivanović; Zlatko Keser; Jure Kokeza, Igor Konjušak; Željko Lapuh; Tihomir Lončar; Matko Mijić; Zoltan Novak; Frane Paro; Lukša Peko; Dimitrije Popović; Ivan Posavec; Zdenka Pozaić; Ivo Prančić; Davorin Radić; Siniša Reberski; Tina Samaržija; Miran Šabić; Robert Šimrak; Ivica Šiško; Josip Škerlj; Matko Trebotić; Dino Trtovac; Munir Vejzović; Zlatan Vrkljan; Josip Zanki; Marko Živković

IGOR EŠKINJA
POETICS OF TRANSPARENCY

27.4.2023. - 8.6.2023.
Curator: Jelena Tamindžija Donnart

The works of Igor Eškinja take as their subject the production of the image in contemporary society, in the current age,suffocating in the media transmission of images in all formats. They play with the perception of the picture in this day and age as well as with the concept of the image in the dictionary of visual culture and of art history. In the context of contemporary society, which is characterised by extreme visual saturation with images, accompanied by their rapid alternation, people, which is to say the users of the media space, gradually empty these images of meaning. This is a process of dense cacophony that is marked by the methods of overlapping, multiplication and stripping away of meaning. The definition of the image in the artistic vocabulary of Eškinja is not uniform and fully formed; in his works he subjects it to incessant reinterpretation and the re-reading of its layering. A kind of deconstruction of the image is going on, the artist entering the sphere of the apparentlyBaudrillardian simulacrum in which the concept replaces reality. But the artist here is not feigning the creation of other worlds, working, rather, on the deconstruction of the perception of the world we see and giving us a different view of ordinary objects.
For the selection of the materials to use in his works, Eškinjaresorts to the inventory of the everyday, choosing materials that occasionally we don’t notice in our lives up until the moment when we really need them. Whether it’s a piece of A4 paper, sand, self-adhesive tape, the artist restores to these apparently banal items a modicum of dignity, placing them in the centre of the story, making them the protagonists. It’s important to point out that all these materials have a certain function, a given place in time and space that appoints them their role in everyday life.

Biography:

Igor Eškinja (Croatia, 1975) lives and works in Rijeka, Croatia. Eškinja constructs his architectonics of perception as ensembles of modesty and elegance. The artist “performs” the objects and situations, catching them in their intimate and silent transition from two-dimensional to three-dimensional formal appearance. Using simple, inexpensive materials, such as adhesive tape or electric cables and unraveling them with extreme precision and mathematical exactitude within strict spatial parameters, Eškinja defines another quality that goes beyond physical aspects and enters the registers of the imaginative and the imperceptible.
Eškinja’s participated in various group exhibitions: Manifesta 7, Rovereto (2008); Complicity, Rena Bransten gallery, San Francisco (2009); 28th Biennale of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (2009); Dirt, Wellcome foundation, London, (2011), Rearview Mirror, Power plant, Toronto, (2011); Ash and Gold – a world tour, Marta Herford, (2012); 2nd Ural Industrial Biennale, Ekaterinburg, (2012); 8 ways to overcome space and time, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, (2013), T-HT Award, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2016), Every Time A Ear di Soun – Documenta 14 program, Savvy contemporary, Berlin (2017), as well as solo exhibitions in: Project for unsuccessful gathering, Casino Luxembourg-Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg (2009), Inhabitants of generic places, Kunstforum, Vienna, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2011), The Day After, Federico Luger gallery, Milano, (2011); Interieur Captivant, MAC/VAL Museum, Vitry, (2012); Quixote, MUWA, Graz, (2014), PRODUCTIVE WORK_what is it supposed to be?, Q21, Museums quartier, Vienna, (2018), EXPOSURES, Kunsthalle Bratislava (2021).

WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS
Sophie Erlund, Stephen Kent, Josep Maynou, Igor Eškinja, Mark Požlep

27.4.2023. - 8.6.2023.
Curator: Jelena Tamindžija Donnart

JOSEP MAYNOU
Spain, 1975

Josep Maynou's multidisciplinary approach is both performative and object based. It comes together as a form of contemporary storytelling, a fictional take on everyday life in the form of humorous ideas that expand onto his objects. The sculptures he makes are at once illustrations of these ideas, as much as they are props and stages where the narrative takes place. Maynou uses common domestic materials and practical tools that are often discarded or hidden to create anthropomorphous utensils. His projects are scenarios for action that allow both functionality and absurdity at the same time.
Maynou (Barcelona, 1980) lives and works between Paris and Berlin. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, Faculta de Belas Artes Porto in Porto and Middlesex University in London. His recent solo shows and two-person shows include Return of the Junker. JM2000 (with Jordi Mitjà, curated by Sira Pizà, Bombon Projects, Barcelona), To bow at the beginning not at the end (Collection Born, Munich), Leisure (Bombon Projects, Barcelona 2017), Thing1, Thing2 (Broken Dimanche, Berlin 2017), Things: To do (Beverly’s, NYC 2017) or The Ninja from Marrackech (Galerie Suvi Lehtinen, Berlin 2015). His work has been shown at group exhibitions such as Alpina huus (Le Commun, Geneve 2017), How to do things (Lehman&Silva, Porto 2017), My body doesnt like summer (Haverkampf Gallery, Berlin 2018), Black Garden (Galería Louis 21, Palma de Mallorca 2018), Hunter of Worlds (SALTS Basel 2018); and art fairs such as Arco Lisboa, Code Art Fair Copenhague, and Sunday Art Fair London (2018). His most recent performances include Pane Per Poveri (Laatrac, 14th Documenta, Athens 2017), Making Public Program (Fundació Tapies, Barcelona 2017) and Material Art fair (Mexico City 2016).

In his work, where he uses everyday objects, artist Josep Maynou also touches on the theme of simulations, where he reinterprets motifs from the surrounding consumer world making use of them as platform for the transmission of his message. By being placed in an exhibition venue, objects lose their original function and are transformed into their new identities. All told 34 chopping boards are on show, with messages, incidental sentences and drawings blow-torched in. Maynou’s chopping boards embody the Mediterranean aspiration for socialising with food and the joint preparation of food as an essential item in the process. The spirit of this togetherness is engraved into each individual cutting board that the artist uses like pages of his visual diary during his travels. Drawings and words incised in the boards are an unfiltered area of emotions and thoughts, first steps on the empty tabula that also halt here. On the chopping boards we meet an accumulation of thoughts and sketches that are reined back here, at the level of entrance hall. This immediacy and rawness of thinking inscribes a sincere narration in the work, recording this visual diary at the very same moment of the delight with the idea of a thought that is then written out on the wooden pages of the diary. We can follow the continuation of this visual diary in Chocolate Diaries, in which Maynou uses chocolate wrappers as canvas on which he repeats a similar pattern of jotting down immediate experiences. In his works we can read a certain casual playfulness, an unassuming lack of pretentiousness, though the artist is in no way superficial. On the contrary, his concision and acuteness of expression in this form of fragmented discourse nudges the visitor to take part and fill in the work with his or her own associations about the terms on offer. Printing on everyday objects goes on in the work Pareo, where the artist writes on this beach accessory the words Get pissed to get unpissed. From being an ordinary fashion item used to cover, primarily, the female body the pareo has with time taken on connotations of one of the deeper problems of today’s society. We often associate it with depictions of people from third countries who walking along the beach endeavouring to sell it to tourists from mainly developed countries and it has become fraught with additional meaning. For this reason the artist writes out the words meant to embody this feeling and send a certain message to the person who takes it in.

MARK POŽLEP
Slovenia, 1981

MARK POŽLEP (1981) finished his BA and MA at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana and completed an Advanced Master’s Degree in Transmedia at the Sint- Lukas Campus in Brussels and HISK in Ghent. He works in the field of visual and performative arts, spatial installations and video art. His artistic practice involves journey- travels, which function both as long-durational performance/endurance art and as an art piece in itself. It is an intense procedural exploration, aiming to reveal the tension between politics, poetics and individual action.
His work has been presented in numerous group and solo exhibition, including EKO 8, International Triennial of Art and Environment / A Letter to the Future, UGM, Maribor, L’Eet Domino, Manifesta 13 - Les Parallèles du Sud, Nice; Contour Biennial 9-Colton as Cotton, Mechelen ; Southwind, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Cold Wind From The Balkans, Pera Museum Istanbul; Resilience, 7th Triennial of Slovenian Contemporary Art, MSUM Ljubljana; The Event , 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana; Cultural Hero , II Biennial of Quadrilateral/BQ_2, Museum of Contemporary Art, Rijeka; U3 , Fifth Triennial of Slovenian Contemporary Art, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana; Essl Award Winners , Essl Museum, Vienna/Klosterneuburg.

The cinematic essay called Hogshead 733 follows the story of the voyage the artists Maxime Berthou and Mark Požlep undertook between August 23 and September 21, 2015. From the starting point of Trébeurden in Brittany to the final destination of the Isle of Islay in Scotland, the two artists underwent various experiences that would test out the limits of their endurance and also raise the issue of the very pointfulness of setting out on this journey. All told 20 drawings done in charcoal, crayon and watercolours follow the cinematographic essay like a camera that has been found with undeveloped film waiting to come to light. The work, which was created five years after the journey was done, with its expressive strength tells of the still powerful memory of the experience undergone and the traces they left on the artist. The boat Soutien de famille made of white oak in 1942 was at once refuge and home to the artists and their greatest nightmare. The shortcomings of the boat, at first not visible after the slapdash restoration, resulted on many occasions in the near sinking of the vessel while it was crossing the Channel. The unbearable cacophony of sounds that they heard during the voyage or that they seemed to hear is translated in the drawings into rapid strokes and agitated compositions with just the occasional fare of choppy red crayon and watercolour. These are sections of memory in which dark reigns, night scenes in which the fear of the inchoately vast stretches of the sea and the power of nature was the most sensitive. Some of the fashes of colour indicate the depiction of areas and torches for rescue during distress at sea which were actually not used by the artists. We can distinguish three stories worked out in the drawings: the boat theme, the relation of Maxime and Mark and the dialogue with the sea. The composition is choppy and synthesises the omnipresent sense of danger, uncertainty and fear that the author says he still feels, this powerful feeling not having passed after the elapse of five years. Exhaustion and sea-sickness, the buffeting of the waves, the unceasing rocking and absence of an even surface would contribute to the creation of the agitation of the depictions, produced by alternating close-ups and distant views. It is a story about a journey, an inheritance and friendship, an Odyssean trip in which the separate microcosm of the boat in which the authors live and the outer world with all its natural laws complement each other. The maritime wanderings were to end in the boat being broken up and a barrel of whisky being made of the planks of white oak, the absorbed sea salt in the wood affecting the taste of the liquor. The actual journey is looked upon as a work of art, a separate life. The author says that he already has his own perspective, his own opening into the world, and endeavours in his art work to create situations in which he himself would like to change something.

SOPHIE ERLUND
Denmark, 1981

Sophie Erlund is a Danish born artist living and working in Berlin. In her practice, Erlund has long explored a variety of themes and questions about the more-than-human, creating sculptures, installations and complex soundscapes, which deal with the central theme of transition and understanding the world through the irrational mind, and in particular our ongoing entanglement with artificial intelligence and its impact on our psychology. Sophie Erlund’s work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions across Europe and the US since receiving her BA Fine Art degree with honors from Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, London (UK) in 2003.

Sophie Erlund, Stephen Kent, Igor Eškinja, Mark Požlep and Josep Maynou here create their own Decameronish narration, which impinges, every day of the residency, ever more tightly, on the development of a fabula that unfolds at several levels. Fabula here does not flow linearly, its narrative consisting rather of fragments accumulated during extended evening conversations interrupted by the clinking of glasses and cutlery. Artist Sophie Erlund devotes herself to these moments, bringing them together in her soundpiece she calls “One month and two burners”.
In this work we have the occasion to hear fragments of conversations, which are sometimes intelligible, sometimes identifiable only by voices in the distance, the laughter of people conversing, profound statements and quotes from philosophers with jokes, muttering and humming, the sound of work on materials: drilling, scraping, sawing and ambiental sound. Interwoven into the deafening cacophony are moments of calm, morning stillness accompanied with the incidental song of migrating birds on their way south or the half-wild goats that dominate the landscape of the Serra de Tramuntana mountain chain, the nocturnal rustling of leaves and the calm of late hours filled with long moonshine. We respond to the accumulation of fragments of the separate moments in the piece as to an abstract poem, an ode to a period. Although sculpturally located in the space of a group exhibition, the powerful impact of the acoustic work is manifested in the sculptural formation of the mental space of visitors to the show. The soundpiece pervades the exhibition, subtly suggesting the context in which the works were created and perpetuating their point of departure. The artist’s reliefs refect the process of long-lasting working of wood, of meticulous execution. As during the carving of a totem, in sculpture Erlund inscribes total devotion to the object that absorbs spirituality, embodying the spirit of animism and the nature of the cult. The smooth surface varnished in dark tones continues its fluidity in the impressed fragmented objects. She shapes resin in the form of a hemisphere into which she impresses objects from the surrounding, creating an abstract form. The intensely coloured abstraction is picked up in the impressed parts of glass that the artist decorates. Wood, with its fullness and vitality, is contrasted with the transparency of the impressed parts that relieve the heaviness of the wooden sculpture. In contrast to the natural materials of which the sculpture is made there are associations of the current post-modern world that like misreading of codes on the monitor impairs the visual clarity. Wires and chips take the observer of again into the current context in which technology like a parasite on a tree intrudes into all its pores, finding holes in which it can live some longish period. This search for forms is continued in drawings place alongside the sculpture that, in the words of the artist, represent her field of expanded freedom. All told there are 18 drawings making up the base for the artist’s experiment in searching for forms that appear on the surface like a halted microscopic view. Forms interfuse in a limited range of colours. The absence of clearly defined borders creates an unpredictable world of interweaving of forms, in which there is the circle shape that is presented repetitively in compositional variations on the theme. The interlinking of forms suggests the inevitable involvement of human beings in this world of forms where in the microscopic view our specious domination in the world is done away with in the depiction of cellular organisms.

STEPHEN KENT
USA, 1985

In his ceramics, paintings and mosaics, Stephen Kent demonstrates his engagement with psychedelic culture and comparative mythology. He works with found everyday imagery and design originally intended for domestic consumption and amplifies its strange and disorientating possibilities with his meticulous and invested craft processes. Kent explores cultural codes that can be found embedded in everyday objects and scenarios. With a medium refexive approach, he uses a process-oriented language to humorously investigate the stuf our world is made of.
Stephen Kent (1985, USA) lives and works in Berlin. Kent received a Master of Fine Arts at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit, and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Pennsylvania State University. He has recently exhibited with Elephant Kunsthall in Norway, Good Weather Gallery in the U.S., LVL 3 in Chicago, Haverkampf Leistenschneider Galerie in Berlin, Szydlowski Galeria in Warsaw, Renata Fabbri Gallery in Milan, and Die Brücke Museum, Berlin. His mosaic works have been written about in publications such as Der Tagespiegel and the Chicago Tribune.

While creating worlds within worlds in today's age of visual super-saturation one arrives at the simulation of created worlds where the questions are posed of possible boundaries and in general of the problem of the placing of the border of the illusionary and the real. The work of Stephen Kent actually re-examines the very concept of the image and its meaning in today's world. In his Tractatus logico-philosophicus, Wittgenstein says “the borders of my language mean the borders of my world” which leads to raiding the visual inventory in the search of added answers. Kent is of the opinion that the “image comes into being when language lets us down, when we do not know any longer how to explain something... and then we begin to understand, to obtain a wider perspective”. The works of Kent at the group show can be divided into two sections according to the technique he uses in creating or building the picture. In the mosaic paintings, Kent uses the technique of mosaic that he appliqués to the already visually saturated support of aluminium dibond. This artist explores the area of hyperproduction of images in which they are always created with amazing speed and with the accessibility of today’s technology of movie and still camera, integrated into all the technological devices that we use. Kent embarks on his research finding various compositions from photographs of personal albums, from the Internet, photographs of textiles from which he extracts the most interesting frames. Kent manipulates his visual material, independently determining the relation of firm and blurred boundaries in the image. It is important to point out the relation of author and other people’s photographs that during this process he appropriates. Adding further layers of oil, acrylic and plaster onto the canvas, Kent goes on building a picture of fragments, on which a dominant colour charge prevails. The principle of building the image is more visible in the images-mosaics where the artist instead of ceramic tesserae with a clearly marked form makes and uses what is called trencadis, bits of broken ceramic tiles and stone which he inserts into his work. Sequencing his mosaic on an appropriated photograph, Kent creates a new narration of his own in which the visual worlds of photography and painting are confronted, the consumerism of mass production and tendentious manual work multiplication and simplification, the gloss of photography and the powderiness of cement that binds the mosaic, the excessive ornamentalisation of the external world that incessantly obtrudes into our visual field creating new needs and the actual mosaic as embodiment of the closed spaces that invite contemplation of human life.

IGOR EŠKINJA
Croatia, 1975

The artist who in his month-long residency spent time in Spain perceives a similar infrastructure problem of Mediterranean countries, coming from the same kind of setting of his home country Croatia. The boom in investment has turned the wild coasts of Mediterranean countries into huge building sites for luxury holiday homes and buildings that attempt to sell the idea of the Mediterranean spirit of life. There is an attempt to maximise this heightened spirit in the summer months, and thus two periods in the rhythm of the local population are polarised: from maximum wear and tear on the space and the capacity to total lack of content and absence of people in the winter months. The simulation of life that Baudrillard explains in postmodern society comes to the fore again here. Villas with sea views, elegantly simplified and markedly conceptually finished Airbnb apartments that endeavour to put Mediterranean charm into their aesthetic simulate the life of Mediterranean Man, creating a stereotype along the depiction of Orientalism by Edward Said. Clearly visible in the organisation of the space of reality is the tendency of people to control the external, which refects our inner longings. Interiors and exteriors of houses dominate by manifesting human domination from the interior decoration by the addition of pot plants to the taming of nature, of the outer world of plants, the growth and spread of which in the space is strictly controlled. But as soon as this control relaxes, the powerful vegetation starts to create its own heterotopia, dominating people and space, growing unstoppable. In his artistic practice, Eškinja studies the relations of space and perception, actually the relation between us and the space by which we are surrounded. In the “Accidental Perspectives” installations he puts the focus of interest on the moments of the construction process in which the rawness of the materials is the most visible. He builds a picture of plasterboard, presenting it as fragment of wall on which he continues to apply plaster. As total contrast to the amorphous raw plaster a precise and mathematically exact, meticulously produced network of lines is written out. Creating form using optical illusions, the lines are on the border of interior and exterior enabling the observer to read of the work at several levels. The dark neutral colours of the background, the drywall, in brownish ochre and olive green, contribute to the impression of incompletion of the surroundings into which a systematic drawing of lines composed of glossy self-adhesive tape is introduced. In the drawing we discern the motif of curtain, transcendental motif embodying the symbol of an occupied house. Curtains represent a border, but again a controlled border between inner and outer world, for once again the human control of space and personal privacy comes to the fore: with a single movement it is possible to reveal or conceal one’s space, creating new relations between the worlds.

DUBRAVKO KASTRAPELI
Dialogue with Držić

With the exhibition, the House of Marin Držić, in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, celebrates ten years of collaboration with illustrator Dubravko Kastrapeli

30.3.2023. - 23.4.2023.
Curator: Valerija Jurjević

AXIS OF THE WORLD_THE TREE

9.3.2023. - 23.4.2023.

Curator: Petra Golušić

Robert Farber, African tree, Kenia, 1986

This exhibition comprises a selection of forty seven works from the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Dubrovnik Museum of Modern Art. Twenty-seven artists belong prevailingly to Modernism in foreign and in the national art, while contemporary expression is presented just minimally. What these works have in common is the motif of tree, which is brought in independently or in groups, mainly in works of pure landscape. It is also depicted in the foregrounds of seascapes and vistas; it is presented integrally, in sequences, as part of a forest, fragmentarily. Mostly featured at the exhibition is painting, but drawings, prints and photographs are also represented.
The substantial content is considered.

The period marked stretches from the end of the 19th to the end of the 20th century and takes in the work of the following artists: Vlaho Bukovac (1855 – 1922), Mato Celestin Medović (1857 – 1920), Josip Lalić (1867 – 1953), Nadežda Petrović (1873 – 1915), Marko Rašica (1883 – 1963), Gabrijel Jurkić (1886 – 1974), Oskar Herman (1886 – 1974), Ljubo Babić (1890 – 1974), Ignjat Job (1895 – 1936), Sava Šumanović (1896 – 1942), Milo Milunović (1897 – 1967), Hans Gassebner (1902 – 1966), Willy Hempel (1905 – 1985), Sergije Glumac (1903 – 1964), Slavko Šohaj (1908 – 2003), Ivan Ettore (1910 – 1938), Ante Kaštelančić (1911 – 1989), Josip Colonna (1911 – 2001), Gabro Rajčević (1912 – 1943), Jakša Magaš (1918 – 2012), Antun Masle (1919 – 1967), Đuro Pulitika (1922 – 2006), Joško Baica (1923 – 2010), Tomislav Ciko (1930 – 1982), Josip Trostmann (1938), Robert Farber (1944) and Damir Fabijanić (1955).

A speech manifested diversely and similarly is established.
Sensoriness is intellectual and intellectuality is sensory.

The tree is venerated in all cultures and times, and as a motif of art history is always present at various levels of meaning and interpretation. It is one of the richest and most widely disseminated symbolic themes connected to the idea of a vital universe in incessant renewal.
It is a symbol of life.
In its incessant development and its ascent to the sky it evokes the whole symbolism of uprightness.
It links three levels of the cosmos, brings together all the elements and is in general considered a symbol of the links that are established between earth and sky.
In terms of its strength and its perpendicularity it has a central character: the tree of the world or world-tree is another term for the axis of the world.
It marks and labels the return to the centre of being.

The universal zone is mapped with the sign process / aesthetic process.
Works of art give aesthetic information and communication.
Diversity is riches.
Particularity belongs to universality.

Thinking of the sensory is staged.
The subjective of sensoriness is objectified.
The visual turns into the spiritual.

The tree, symbol of nobility, is subjected to the drama of rape and destruction.

Mankind must have a serious understanding of his attitude to the wealth that surrounds him and which is essential for his continued existence.

Josip Trostmann, Pink landscape, 1974

ĐURO PULITIKA
(1922. – 2006.)
A RETROSPEKTIVE EXHIBITION

AUTHORS OF THE EXHIBITION: Zdenko Tonković, Rozana Vojvoda
EXPERT ASSOCIATE AT THE EXHIBITION: Maja Nodari
CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION: Rozana Vojvoda
AUTHOR AND CURATOR OF THE DRAWING UNIT: Jelena Tamindžija Donnart
LAYOUT OF THE EXHIBITION: Zdenko Tonković, Rozana Vojvoda
LAYOUT OF THE DRAWING UNIT: Jelena Tamindžija Donnart

15.12.2022. - 5.3.2023.

The exhibition was organized on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the great Dubrovnik painter Đuro Pulitika.

Spring Landscape, 1974, oil on canvas

Inevitably inscribed in a drawing is time, which we register in the rapid strokes, in the unfinished parts of the composition, in the limned and erased segments of the scene shown or perhaps when it is especially devoted to the minute elaboration of details. It needs no very long period of reflection, for its essence is accomplished in immediacy, through direct transfer of thought to paper without further ado. It is an area of a plethora of experiments and unbounded freedom of imagination which like a stream of consciousness novel flows over onto empty pages. For these very reasons, then, all the attributes according to which we can identify the style of Đuro Pulitika are here heightened, for in drawings and sketches the artist completely lays bare his thinking, depicting its chronological development in the thinking through of a given scene that will later be transferred to canvas. The demanding oil-on-canvas technique calls for calm on the part of the artist, attentiveness in his work, meticulousness, rationality and perspicacity, like measured and well- considered thoughts and sentences declaimed in an after-dinner speech. The drawings, then, were able to convey and condense the feeling of the long and relaxed evenings in an amicable and familial atmosphere to which the artist, as good host, was particularly inclined. During such nights he would be known to utter the whole diapason of an individual lexis, including anecdotes, non-standard words, laughter, quarrels, clinking of glasses, unpredicted and spontaneous moments that in the same manner and without any great censorship made their way into Pulitika’s drawing. - Zdenko Tonković

Nets, 1966, oil on canvas

Reclining Nude in Interior, 1978, oil on canvas

HE’S NOT TO BLAME, HE’S A PAINTER!

documentary exhibition

Studio Pulitika, December 8th, 2022 – March 5th, 2023

Curator: Marijeta Radić

The documentary exhibition “He’s not to blame, he’s a painter!” shows for the first time a selection from the rich and meticulously assembled documentary material about the life and work of the painter Đuro Pulitika (1922-2006) on the occasion marking his 100th birth anniversary. The person we have to thank for being able to reconstruct down to the tiniest details the life and work of the retiring painter from Bosanka is his wife Mira Pulitika née Simunić, who deftly put her secretarial skills to work in private life, recording the path of development of Pulitika’s painting. The rich and diverse documentary material comprises numerous exhibition catalogues, particular importance attaching to those from the earliest phases and those from distant venues such as England, Switzerland, Belgium and the US; then there are invitations, newspaper notices and reviews written by art critics and art historians of the calibre of Antun Karaman, Sonja Seferović, Tomislav Lalin, Duško Kečkemet and Josip Depolo; numerous black and white documentary photographs taken through the lenses of well-regarded Croatian photographers like Krešimir Tadić, Nenad Gattin, Aleksandar Saša Novković and Šimo Dragičević. Particularly deserving of our notice of the posters are those from the Schira Gallery in Zagreb of 1979 and 1984, the poster of a big retrospective show in the Museum of Modern Art in Dubrovnik in 1982, of the exhibition in the Gallery of Fine Arts in Split as well as the numerous letters and greetings cards. Information about his 46 solo (since 1953) and almost 200 collective exhibitions in major museum institutions and gallery venues, both in Croatia and abroad is recorded. All these details have been preserved in an orderly manner, arranged in boxes, ring files, envelopes and albums, the contents of any given group of subjects clearly and precisely indicated (often picked out in red) as shown in this exhibition.