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Biography:

Academic painter Lukša Peko was born on April 24, 1941, in Dubrovnik. He completed elementary and secondary school in his hometown. He enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1961 and graduated in 1965 in the class of O. Postružnik and D. Tiljko. He completed his postgraduate studies at the Graphic Arts Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, following his studies from 1966 to 1968 in the class of Marijan Detoni. He lives and works in Dubrovnik.

 

 

Curator: Iva Körbler

 

 

 

 

Sculpture is a rigorous and challenging path for any artist who, at some point during their training, envisions having the perseverance to commit to it as a lifelong vocation. Many Croatian sculptors of the middle generation have, for various reasons, fallen short along the way. However, today, Petar Dolić stands before us as a worthy successor to the rich tradition and lineage of Croatian modern masters, with few aspects of his oeuvre open to dispute or doubt. For Petar Dolić, creating in stone, glass, wood, bronze, or papier-mâché is as natural as breathing; it is a sincere and authentic expression – or extension – of his personality and outlook on life. It is hardly surprising, then, that he produced nearly all new works for this Dubrovnik exhibition in a remarkably short time, inspired by the City, its rich history and maritime character.
As I observed new sculptures created for the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Dubrovnik, I was reminded yet again – for the countless time – that for Petar Dolić, “sculpting” is his way of interacting with the world around him: he actually sees the world through an impressionistic lens, and as soon as an image, association, or metaphor comes to him, he immediately translates it into the material he feels is best suited for that transformation. One of his greatest strengths is his ability to work incredibly fast, almost in a single breath, and he doesn’t rest until a piece is finished. While he may revisit a sculpture later to make slight adjustments, it is no exaggeration to say that Dolić “channels” his sculptures through the material itself. - Iva Körbler

 

 

 

 

 

BIOGRAPHY:

Petar Dolić was born in 1975 in Travnik. He obtained a degree in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1999, in the class of Prof. Šime Vulas. As part of his elective coursework, he attended the Medallic Art and Small-Scale Sculpture class taught by Prof. Damir Mataušić. To date, he has staged 76 solo exhibitions and participated in 90 group exhibitions. He has created numerous sculptures in public spaces: Three Suns – Vela Lozna Bay, Postira; Submarine – Zagreb Fair; Ship on Dry Land – children’s park near Boćarski dom, in Zagreb; Monument to Fallen Defenders in Labin, as part of the Mediterranean Sculpture Symposium; Apple – Crni Lug, as part of the Gorski Kotar Sculpture Workshop in Lokve; Monument to the Croatian Victory Storm 95 in Knin; Monument to the Sailor and Seafaring in Rijeka; Interrupted Childhood, Monument to Children Who Lost their Lives in the Homeland War, Slavonski Brod; Tvrtko’s Mark Monument, Prozor in Rama, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Cross sculpture in the chapel, Rumboci, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Monument to Vlaho Bukovac in Cavtat; St. Francis sculpture, Tolisa, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Monument to the Gastarbeiter from Rama, Prozor, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Diver sculpture, Vrsar. He has received numerous awards, including the University of Zagreb Award, First Prize at the Croatian Watercolour Triennial, and the Forum Gallery Award. He is a member of the Croatian Association of Visual Artists (HDLU) and HZSU. His works are prominently featured in permanent museum and private collections in Croatia and abroad. He lives and works as a freelance artist in Zagreb.

 

 

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7 DAYS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
Final exhibition of children's works from the workshop cycle

Curator: Ivona Šimunović

Gallery Dulcic Masle Pulitika

3.10.-20.10.2024.

The workshop series was organized in August alongside the exhibition "Mediterranean in Croatian Painting of the 20th and 21st Centuries", which was created in collaboration with the Dubrovnik Summer Festival and the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, and was conceived and led by Ivona Šimunović, curator and pedagogue of the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik.

 

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IVO DIMNIĆ 
SILENCE
Gallery Dulčić Masle Pulitika 
27.6. – 11.8.2024
Curator: Petra Golušić

Humility I Strenght, 2023, detail

Multimedia artist Ivo Diminić represented here by a selection from a recent series of sculptures and pictures, started in 2021, in which he resolves the ontology of the human being. The work is founded on interior research. What we are looking at is presentations of the body, seeing in sculpture movement, the imprint of handwriting (black clay is dominant), which does not go into details of the presentation of the human being. Markers of people pared down to the core are independently fabricated. Subtle scenes of the human being consider primordial value. Some of them are standing still on their legs, arms by their slender bodies. They are written in the vocabulary of Giacometti. Scenes of men and women of reticent depths are to be read. The look resolves into thinking, calm, emptiness of mind, freedom of spirit, the dignity of humility and so on. There are no masks. They are silence.

Silence II, 2023, clay, 34,5 x 7 x 5.5 cm

We see the setting of human beings in a minimalist vocabulary in a seated position on small plinths. They are read on rocks (opened up with apertures) in various bent positions of the body. The human being is staged strikingly and fluidly in a contemplative seated pose on a rock with windows through which the interior void of the ground/of the sign is read off. The rock is a place of freedom, of thought and calm. They are temples and churches in the open air. The apertures are polysemic.
The human being emerges in a paroxysm and a cry from the black thin marker of the wall like a crowd that appears from a black box. Everything that is repressed is dissolved there in the powerful extraction into the silence of the void; into truth. In scenes of the egress of people from the box and the walls one can read off the absurdity of the world and its terrible pain, horror, wound. However much pain is individual, it is always steeped in the general, for we are part of the world, the society, these system and so on, which is mentioned in the work.
The truth of the human being is manifested in the desire for self-knowledge.
The mind is capable of liberating itself from any conditioning and only then is it free to discover what lies beyond the realm of thought (Krishnamurti). It is this that Diminić investigates. The source needs to be sought, is written in the works. The erasure of the individual is considered, arriving at the general or universal zone. The individual turns into nothing, is put to death for the sake of entering into the truth. The human being is manifested in both media as essence. It is a whole that is nothingness and is the source of energy.
Minimalism and simplification are also to be discerned in the painting. Man is reduced to the body-sign and is seen in various poses of halted movement stored in the silence. Ivo Diminić explores the inner space of freedom. It lies in the manifestation of the objectified. It is all rooted in the aesthetic being.
Silence belongs in the essence of holiness.
In self-knowing we move along the difficult and the easy paths that alone seek entry into the core. This is the basic predisposition for the possibility of human survival on Earth. Without self-knowing, neither the global nor the local image of the world can be just and free. Humility is always and in everything quiet and essential to the process. Metaphysical quiet is the purpose of the very self and the whole of our life is immersed in it (particularly when the darkness of noise appears).
Knowledge of the self reposes in silence, is marked.
Solitude is journeying the geographical possibilities of the spirit. It transcends this world, is revealed in the zone of Art. In it the essence is encountered; cognition occurs. The infinities of space are given as creative emptinesses and they are always for and never against mankind. Self-knowing is a difficult (at times even terribly painful) process, it is said. But it is by the same token remarkably unified. It is a process that is immeasurably rich in softness/strength. Innate to it is the possibility of profound thinking, peace, subtle work, passage into the infinitude of the soul and of being in the silence of existence. The truth of this is visible in the ontology of the continued record of Diminić and the revelation of the uninterrupted being that is spread in its perfection (Foucault). With minimalist speech the body is reduced to generality and the contemplative arrives at the nothing. When every identity is cancelled, name and label are rejected, the material has no value and so on; then is man within.
Silence is revealed each moment. Here rests the truth of the mysticism of life. Deserts of holiness stretch off in scenes in which man is inscribed in the need for the primordial. Entry into being is the most previous gift. The mission of each individual, it is signified. The presence of metaphysical silence is a spiritual activity that is originally necessary for the existence of the human being, and hence of the world and the cosmos, says Ivo Diminić, in his acute and sophistication. It is eternal in everything individual and universal, as underlined by the work of author.

Essence II, 2023, clay, 12 x 9.5 x 12 cm

BIOGRAPHY
Ivo Diminić was born in Zagreb in 1979. In 1998 he completed his secondary education at the Luka Sorkočević Art School in Dubrovnik, painting design major. In 2000 he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, sculpture major. In 2007 he took his degree, class of Stjepan Gračan. Since 2001 he has become known as one of Dubrovnik’s contemporary artists, appearing on the art scene in the country and having solo shows since 2006. He lives and works in Dubrovnik and in Pridvorje.

 

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The Mediterranean in the 20th and 21st Century Croatian Painting
Dubrovnik Summer Festival and Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik

19.7.-15.9.2024.
Author: Iva Körbler
Curator: Ivona Šimunović

The theme of the Mediterranean is one of the constants in Croatian painting of the 20th and 21st centuries and it is expressed through sub-themes of the Mediterranean landscape with islands and land alike, but also the theme of a female nude in a sea/maritime landscape. It is often colloquially referred to as the painting of the Croatian South. There is a whole galaxy of painters of all generations who are descendants of artists such as Ignjat Job, Petar Lubarda, Oton Postružnik, Ivo Dulčić, Antun Motika, and especially Oton Gliha and Frano Šimunović. The painters of the Mediterranean and the South convey in their works the hymnic and sensual feeling of the painting whose vibrant palette is based on capturing the phenomenon of light on the landscape, stone, sea and vegetation at different times of the day - from the early morning sun, the shining midday to the deep dark shadows of the sunset. These painters preserved in their spiritual eye the memory of the hedonism of the former Mediterranean. The exhibition The Mediterranean in the 20th and 21st Century Croatian Painting aims to phenomenologically and analytically show the circles of stylistic and morphological influences in different generations of Croatian painters, where all stylistic tendencies will be represented.

 

 

 

 

 

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ALEM KORKUT
TEMPORARY
8.6.2024. -14.7.2024.
Curator: Rozana Vojvoda

In his now almost thirty-year-long career, Alem Korkut, one of the most interesting of Croatian artists, has stayed loyal to the sculpture that he handles in two ways; on the one hand he brings out its tactility and materiality, while on the other he imbues his works with a powerful conceptual premise. He has a very broad approach to the medium, not hesitating to combine sculpture and technology. This might refer to the video medium, which is an integral part of some of the works (Ego trip, 2001-2005, Video reliefs, 2004-2007, Weakness, Strength, 2001), or else to innovative interactive installations (Greeting, 2009, Nerves, 2010, Fear, 2011). But irrespective of the conceptual framework that is always present and the expanded understanding of sculpture, Korkut never gets far away from material, which he dissolves, burns, changes and softens, without ever actually negating it. He consistently juxtaposes materials and shapes in differing processes, with which in some cases he seems to be speeding up time. Fading away and vanishing, the decomposition of a clay self-portrait in water in the piece Memento mori (2001) from the Ego trip series, the operation of damp and different chemical agents on paper, sheet metal and other materials in the recent cycle with its unusual title of 1.40 (2022): all of these are the conditions thought out and set up in advance within which Korkut operates in the role of creator, as well as that of observer, equally as interested in and curious about the effects of the experiment as his public. As art criticism has already observed, the salient characteristic of Korkut’s works is processualism, although in some very broad sense this is temporality, an entirely particular and distinctive handling of the category of time. The selection of works for the exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik is then a kind of retrospective survey of Korkut’s consequential and complex handling of temporality, whether the reference is to small changes, to volatility, the dispersal and softening of shapes, the foreseen end of the world, or a simple temporal trajectory from the beginning to the end of a process.

 

Biography
Alem Korkut was born in 1970 in Travnik. He went to primary and secondary school in Banja Luka. He enrolled in the sculpture course in the Sarajevo Academy of Fine Arts in 1991; from 1992 to 1997 he studied sculpture at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts, from which he graduated in 1997.
He has authored several public sculptures, including Caryatid in Pazin (2002), Monument to the Bicycle in Koprivnica (2005), Monument to Fallen Defenders of the Homeland War in Šibenik (2006), Karlovac (2009) and Koprivnica (2016). Among other awards, he won the Grand Prix of the 27th Zagreb Young Artists Salon, the HDLU Annual Young Artist Prize in 2004, the 2009 Split Salon Grand Prix, the third prize at the exhibition T-HT nagrada@msu.hr in 2011, and one of three equal prizes at the 13th Triennial of Croatian Sculpture in 2018. He has won several prizes at open competitions. He has had forty or so one-man shows and appeared in about one hundred and fifty collective exhibitions at home and abroad. From 1998 to 2007 he was a member of the Croatian Association of Independent Artists; from 2004 he was a member and subsequently president of the Atelieri Žitnjak Art Organisation. Since 2007 he has lectured in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he is now full professor. He lives and works in Zagreb.

 

 

 

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 ART STEAM

Chapel of the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik
Duration: 8.5.2024. – 12.5.2024.
Author of the exhibition: Ivona Šimunović

 

 

The ART STEAM educational art workshop, in conjunction with the current exhibition "Visible", as part of this year's 29th Educational Museum Action, was held on May 8th in collaboration with the Marin Držić Elementary School. The workshop was designed and led by Ivona Šimunović, curator and pedagogue of the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, and the art installation created by the workshop participants could be viewed in the chapel of the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik until May 12th. The installation was then installed in the Zagreb City Museum on Saturday, May 18th, on International Museum Day.

 

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THE VISIBLE ONES
Museum of contemporary art, Zagreb, 18.5. – 1.10. 2023.
Museum of modern and contemporary art, Rijeka, 15.12. 2023.-6.2.2024.
Fine Arts Gallery, Split, 22.2. – 30.3.2024.
Museum of modern art, Dubrovnik, 13.4. – 26.5. 2024.

 

The inter-institutional project and exhibition The Visible Ones is a collaboration between the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, Museum of Fine Arts Osijek and the Museum of Fine Arts in Split.
The project is the result of the research on the inclusion of female artists in the art collections of museum institutions, while also making an attempt to document certain aspects of the contemporary art practice of female authors in Croatia. The project aims to raise awareness about the need for equal visibility and representation of female authors in museum collections and programs that until now reach only 10 – 15 %. The artists’ body of work spans a diverse range of topics and sensibilities, and unquestionably deserves increased visibility and attention from both the professional and general public. Structured around thematic units, the exhibition shows the works from the museum collections, together with contemporary artistic creations of authors who, despite their notable presence in the art scene, have not found a place in museum collections.

 

 

The focus of this project’s research is the artistic production during and after the 1990s (by the so-called transitional generation), from the period when the change in the artistic paradigm was accompanied by a shift in ideology, transitions, and socio-political turmoil. The aforementioned social changes have greatly influenced the visibility of artistic productions by women authors who have actualised works of high artistic quality; however, the circumstances (war, geopolitical changes, migrations) have in a way placed their production on the margins of visibility, which also affected museum purchases, as well as their insufficient critical and theoretical visibility. A part of the research includes some of the artists active during the 1980s that have created aside of the major artistic narratives of that time. This project, through teamwork and networking of institutions aims to raise awareness on the importance of equality and equal opportunity, and of promoting the production of women artists in the field of visual arts.

 

 

 

 

 

Female artists in the project:
Marija Ančić, Milijana Babić, Lara Badurina, Gordana Bakić, Selma Banich, Maša Barišić, Breda Beban,
Ana Bilankov, Duška Boban, Mara Bratoš, Sonja Briski Uzelac, Hrvoslava Brkušić, Josipa Bubaš,
Jasenka Bulj, Nikolina Butorac, Branka Cvjetičanin, Tajči Čekada, Tanja Dabo, Vlasta Delimar, Tanja
Deman, Ivana Dražić Selmani, Katerina Duda, Jadranka Fatur, Vera Fischer, Ivana Franke, Maja S.
Franković, Sonja Gašperov, Martina Grlić, Tina Gverović, Nicole Hewitt, Vlatka Horvat, Ana Hušman,
Dunja Ivanišević, Katarina Ivanišin - Kardum, Sanja Iveković, Helena Janečić, Paulina Jazvić, Ivana
Jelavić, Jagoda Kaloper, Nina Kamenjarin, Nives Kavurić-Kurtović, Ivana Keser, Lana Ključarić, Nikolina
Komljenović, Božena Končić Badurina, Jelena Kovačević, Martina Kramer, Ines Krasić, Andreja
Kulunčić, Nina Kurtela, Mirna Kutleša, Ana Kuzmanić, Margareta Lekić, Kristina Leko, Dubravka Lošić,
Luiza Margan, Kristina Marić, Ines Matijević Cakić, Martina Meštrović, Martina Mezak, Kata Mijatović,
Hana Miletić, Alieta Monas Plejić, Petra Mrša, Ana Mušćet, Nadija Mustapić, Irma Omerzo, Ana
Opalić, Magdalena Pederin, Ivana Pegan, Mariana Pende, Jelena Perić, Ana Petrović, Vesna Pokas,
Renata Poljak, Ivana Popović, Vesna Popržan, Ana Požar Piplica, Sonja Pregrad, Nika Radić, Lala
Raščić, Kristina Restović, Nika Rukavina, Neli Ružić, Edita Schubert, Nives Sertić, SofijaSilvia, Ana
Sladetić Šabić, Marijana Stanić, Sandra Sterle, Lana Stojićević, Matea Šabić Sabljić, Jasna Šikanja,
Vlatka Škoro, Mia Štark, Sanja Švrljuga - Milić, Ksenija Turčić, Zrinka Užbinec, Celestina Vičević,
Sandra Vitaljić, Ana Vivoda, Ivona Vlašić, Mirjana Vodopija, Zlata Vucelić, Tanja Vujasinović, Anabel
Zanze, Vlasta Žanić, Darija Žmak Kunić.

 

 

 

Curators: Jasminka Babić (GALUM, Split), Vilma Bartolić (in collaboration with Branka Benčić and Diana Zrilić, MMSU, Rijeka), Martina Munivrana (MSU, Zagreb), Valentina Radoš (MLU Osijek), Rozana Vojvoda (UGD, Dubrovnik); Ana Škegro (MSU, Zagreb) for the performance and discursive programme, Branka Benčić (MMSU Rijeka) for the film programme
Author of the project and the concept: Martina Munivrana

Female artists represented in the exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik:

Marija Ančić, Breda Beban, Duška Boban, Mara Bratoš, Sonja Briski Uzelac, Jasenka Bulj, Branka
Cvjetičanin, Tanja Dabo, Vlasta Delimar, Tanja Deman, Ivana Dražić Selmani, Jadranka Fatur, Vera
Fischer, Sonja Gašperov, Tina Gverović, Sanja Iveković, Vlatka Horvat, Ana Hušman, Helena Janečić,
Katarina Ivanišin-Kardum, Paulina Jazvić, Ivana Jelavić, Nives Kavurić – Kurtović, Lana Ključarić,
Božena Končić Badurina, Mirna Kutleša, Nina Kurtela, Ana Kuzmanić, Margareta Lekić, Kristina Leko,
Dubravka Lošić, Ines Matijević Cakić, Alieta Monas Plejić, Petra Mrša, Ana Opalić, Ivana Pegan,
Mariana Pende, Jelena Perić , Ana Petrović, Renata Poljak, Vesna Popržan, Ana Požar Piplica, Nika
Radić, Lala Raščić, Kristina Restović, Nika Rukavina, Neli Ružić, Edita Schubert, Nives Sertić, Maja S.
Franković, Ana Sladetić Šabić, Marijana Stanić, Sandra Sterle, SofijaSilvia, Lana Stojićević, Matea Šabić
Sabljić, Jasna Šikanja, Vlatka Škoro, Sandra Vitaljić, Ivona Vlašić, Mirjana Vodopija, Zlata Vucelić,
Anabel Zanze, Vlasta Žanić, Darija Žmak Kunić

 

Performative program:

May 18th, 2024: dance performance by Zrinka Užbinec
May, 25th (to be confirmed) performance by Nina Kamenjarin

The project has been realised with support from the Cities of Zagreb, Rijeka, Split, Dubrovnik and Osijek, the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, in collaboration with the European Parliament Office in Croatia.

 

 

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CHILDREN'S EXHIBITION BANNERS 

Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik

Duration: 30.1.2024. – 4.2.2024. 

Author of the exhibition: Ivona Šimunović 

 

In collaboration with the Marin Držić Elementary School, and as part of the St. Blaise Festival program, under the leadership of Ivona Šimunović, curator and pedagogue of the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik, the exhibition BANNERS, created at an art workshop attended by 3rd grade students, was opened.

 

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VLADIMIR DODIG TROKUT: IMAGINE
Atrium of the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik
26.1. - 24.2.2024.

 

 

The installation consists of a black cage almost three meters high in which an oversized gun is locked, or rather, closed. The name of the installation alludes to John Lennon's evergreen that carries a message of peace, and this is precisely the message that this installation aims to send, considering the overall world events. For the artist, the gun was an unmistakable symbol of war, killing and violence, and even execution. In addition to the artist himself, gallerist Miloš Glavurtić worked on the installation for more than five years, calling this installation "Freedom for birds, imprisonment for weapons". Vladimir Dodig Trokut created the original work in 1991 under the title Poj ptica pjevalica, and an enlarged version in IMAGINE 2018. The work has already been exhibited in Switzerland, in front of the Albertina Museum in Vienna, on the golden Peristyle in Split, in front of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, and recently in the Arsenal in Hvar. The work with the universal anti-war message has been seen by about 12,000,000 people so far, and the next destinations are Madrid, Guernica, Paris, and London.
Vladimir Dodig Trokut (1949-2018) is a Croatian conceptual artist and collector. He worked in Split from 1968 as a member of the group Crveni Peristil, and in Zagreb from 1976. He created a distinctive artistic oeuvre, which includes, among other things, actions and performances as well as objects, installations, rooms of wonders and problem exhibitions. His museological project Anti-museum resulted in a huge collection of significant cultural and documentary value, assembled mainly from discarded objects.

 

 

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TRANSFER

multimedia production and video mapping of selected sculptures
from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik

- in collaboration with PIXEL design

Duration: January 26th and 27th, 2024
Curator: Ivona Šimunović

 

 

The exhibition "Transfer" in collaboration with Pixel design, through multimedia production and video mapping, brings a small part of the hidden holdings of the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik to the space of the Studio Pulitika, which for the event of the Night of Museums is transformed into a virtual staging of the exhibition, which in a short time offers us an attractive, unconventional and moving story about 20th century sculptures from the collection. Taking them out of the context of museum life and exhibition, and yet, assigning them a new discourse that determines different interactive exhibition processes, the sculptures come to life in a previously non-existent way, creating a new context woven from the already formed and known, but differently shaped.

 

The artists represented are: Kosta Angeli Radovani (1916 - 2002), Vojin Bakić (1915 - 1992), Josip Diminić (1937 - 2019), Dušan Džamonja (1928 - 2009), Ante Gržetić (1920 - 1992), Stjepan Gračan (1941 - 2022), Stanko Jančić (1932 - 2018), Ivan Kožarić (1921 - 12020), Gregor Kruk (1911 - 1988), Kristina Kojan Goluža (1979), Milena Lah (1920 - 2003), Ivan Lozica (1910 - 1943), Valerije Michieli (1922 - 1981), Marin Studin (1895 – 1960), Aleksandar Srnec (1924 – 2010), Petar Smajić (1910 – 1985), Marija Ujević (1933 – 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.

 

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 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

 

  

 

 

UMJETNIČKA GALERIJA DUBROVNIK, Put Frana Supila 23, 20000 Dubrovnik, Email: info@ugdubrovnik.hr, Tel: 020 426-590, Fax: 020 432-114