ARCHIVE · 2008
| THE DUBROVNIK MOMENT IN THE FINE ARTS PAINTING AND SCULPTURE (2) The panel of judges: Tonko Maroević, Zvonimir Mrkonjić and Igor Zidić December 21, 2008 – February 5, 2009 |
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This exhibition presents the paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings of 61 fine artists who were born in or live in Dubrovnik, and the 93 works were selected by an expert panel of judges consisting of leading Croatian art critics, Tonko Maroević, Zvonimir Mrkonjić and Igor Zidić. This artistic event, just like that with the same name that was shown in April 2004, is imagined as a kind of review of recent art in the city, of the practice of the most widely represented and traditional media of painting and sculpting. It indicates, primarily, the fact that in this milieu that is very small in terms of population there is an impressive number of people engaged in art, including a considerable number of professionally trained artists. Summing up the achievements to be shown at the exhibition, in the catalogue preface, Tonko Maroević says: “With its vigour and pluralism, its quality and currency, Dubrovnik is an essential point of vantage in contemporary Croatian fine arts, and it is worth presenting in all its formal and problem ranges”.
| DRAGO TRUMBETAŠ Drawings, paintings, prints (1968-2008) curated by: Antun Maračić October 18 until November 30, 2008 |
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Drago Trumbetaš (1937), a typesetter in his main occupation, is nevertheless an all-rounder, a self-taught artist (poet, writer, painter), with a picaresque biography who, as well as in his own country and profession, was employed in Germany, while a guest worker, at the most diverse of physical jobs. At the same time, he created his uncommonly valuable artistic oeuvre, in which, as chronicler and critic, in drawing, in spontaneous concurrence with the tradition of the best socially committed figurative artists such as Dix, Grosz, and the Croatian Zemlja group members, he described his own life and the lives of many of the fellow sufferers and toilers who shared his fate. Restless, sensitive to all forms of injustice, he would suddenly break off employment that he had obtained only with difficulty, and in the far-off 1950s exposed himself to the risk of defecting. He was arrested as he crossed the border illegally, spent time in refugee camps, returned, went out again, and yet again came back. At the beginning of the 1980s, in the former Yugoslavia, he was long imprisoned, suspected of the wrong politics. He treated the fate of the prisoner in one of his drawing cycles.But the strongest and most striking part of his work is the rich guest-worker cycle. The strictly linear drawing, clean, almost painfully acute, without shading, hatching or sfumato, full of tiny and minutely observed details, tells of the powerful ability to observe and the capacity to depict reality with great plasticity. Accompanying his heroes in the stations, immigration offices, at work, at moments of leisure, in isolation, at parties together, getting drunk, visiting disorderly houses and so on, Trumbetaš is merciless in his meticulous truthfulness. But he spares nobody, certainly not his own heroes (or himself) whose wandering lives he reveals with all the warts on, in the greatest of intimacies (at the toilet, self-gratification), yet we never for a moment doubt of the authenticity and size of Trumbetaš’s empathy. He registers the details of the urban landscape with particular care. With the architecture presented in great detail, in the city infrastructure and the figures of his protagonists and the passer-by extras, the print-maker and typesetter Trumbetaš in particular takes in the forest of big-city adverts, exactly drawing out their typefaces, legibly setting out the ads. But he does not convey them passively; on the contrary, he regularly sabotages them with his ironical pastiches, using them as additional critical commentary alongside the scenes registered. Thus for example in the drawing Tonček at Work (Tonček being his emblematic hero, whom he observes in all the situations of gastarbeiter life) of 1974, he juxtaposes the invented inscriptions from the façade of a building behind a street building site that, in order to display the concern of the state for its foreign workers, announce the names of various gastarbeiter institutions – School for Guest Workers, Theatre for Guest Workers, Hospital for Guest Workers, Guest Worker Insurance Co., and so on) to the graffiti on the fence of the site in the foreground, which gave shape to xenophobic drawings and slogans like Gastarbeiter raus and Scheissgastarbeiter usw. Hitting targets in the society of plenty that has hosted him, Trumbetaš created the cycle Bankfurt is Krankfurt, in which, moralising from his own viewpoint as a man of rural origin, he denounces all the decadence of the developed west. As well as these cycles, the exhibition also includes pieces related to Trumbetaš’s imaginary correspondence with Van Gogh, in which the author practices a particular form of conceptual procedure. Recognising in the great personality of the unhappy painter many points of contact with his own biography, Trumbetaš swaps thoughts and experiences with Van Gogh, paints in his way, copying and rephrasing his paintings. This is a cycle in which Trumbetaš, master of the black and white drawing, consistently with the paintings of his imaginary interlocutor, started practising colour with great intensity.Then there are Trumbetaš’s portraits in various drawing techniques, in which with the spare resource of the fine line and a hint of colour he conveys the characters of persons close to him Also exhibited are recent works in which book-lover and impassioned reader Trumbetaš pays tribute to the writer A. G. Matoš, not only through illustrating his poems, but also by writing/drawing out the texts of them. The same goes for pieces on the topic of Krleža’s Balada Petrice Kerempuha, which constitute an ongoing topic. Finally, we are showing didactic panels, invaluable for an understanding of the genesis of his works, in which, along with copies of some of the final drawings there are also newspaper articles, photographs of settings and people who were the antecedents of the actual drawing. Through these materials we can see the meticulous preparation of his approach, the complexity of the idea that this unique work enjoins.Also at the exhibition, we can see the excellent documentary film about Trumbetaš, the work of Bogdan Žižić and Hans-Dieter Grabe.
Biography
1937 Drago Trumbetaš was born in Velika Mlaka, not far from Zagreb.
1956 Trumbetaš graduated from the Graphic Industry School in Zagreb; in the school paper, entitled Young Printer, he published short stories, drawings and poems. He got a job in the Grafićki zavod Hrvatske as a hand typesetter.
1957 Dissatisfied with the way things worked, he quit his job and crossed the border illegally into Austria, where he spent time in refugee camps (Klagenfurt, Linz, Enns). There, he wrote an extensive diary with sketches.
1958 He returned to Zagreb and, with breaks, went on working at his trade.
1960 For a short time he worked in the printing shop of the Croatian National Bank.
1961-1962 Employed as a draughtsman for survey maps in Zagreb.
1962 He married Sidonija Koljeno, and a year later his daughter Marija was born.
1963-1965 He worked as graphic and art editor in the journals Savremena tehnika, ABC tehnike and Delta.
1966 He and his wife went off to work in Germany, in Frankfurt am Main, where he worked in the ironing and packing departments, then as a typesetter in printing shops of the place.
His three-year-old daughter Marija died.
1968 He did his first pencil drawings from the gastarbeiter cycle
1969-1972 He did oils on glass, with Turopolje motifs, along the lines of the Hlebine school.
1971 In Frankfurt, his son Tomislav was born. They returned to Croatia.
1972 Birth of a daughter, Katarina.
1973 Return to Frankfurt, worked as a typesetter in Frankfurter Rundschau. He went on with deeply considered work on the gastarbeiter cycle.
1975 In Zagreb two portfolios of prints were produced, a large and a small Gastarbeiter, in the Božo Biškupić Editions series, with a foreword by Veselko Tenžera.
1976 Bogdan Žižić shot a documentary film about the author entitled Gastarbeiter Trumbetaš / The Guest Worker Trumbetaš (Zagreb Film). Then came vigorous exhibition activity at home and abroad. German television channels (ARD, ZDF, HR) made documentaries and television stories about Trumbetaš (1976, 1977, 1979, and then later, in 1980, 1990).
1977 A book was published – Dragutin Trumbetaš Gastarbeiter Büchergilde Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main). He started writing a novel, Non-Smoker. One large and two small Gastarbeiter albums came out in Darmstadt; in West Berlin a 200-copy Gastarbeiter album was published. The director Baerbel Dickenberger shot Gastarbeiter – Drago Trumbetaš (ARD, Hamburg).
1979. He published poems in Germany papers and journals. He started written a drama, Sadist, and illustrated books.
1980 He moved his library to Velika Mlaka, at which time the customs found specimens of émigré printing. He was arrested, condemned for political reasons to a year and a half in prison. After a long trial, thanks to the engagement of German intellectuals and politicians – journalist Gunter Walraff, the then president of German PEN, Heinrich Böll, the politicians Egon Bahr and Hans Dietrich Genscher, the former Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt, the sentence was commuted to six months. He got a job in the Grafički Zavod. He completed the drama Sadist. Director Hans-Dieter Grabe shot the documentary film Life Experiences. Dragutin Trumbetaš or Love Please (ZDF, Mainz)
1981 A small print album was published, from the cycle Untere Menschen, in Frankfurt am Main.
1982 A large print album came out, from the cycle Bankfurt ist Krankfurt in Frankfurt am Main, in which the artist criticised European society.
1983 He served a six month sentence in Stara Gradiška prison.
1984 He started work on the drawing project Ex Libris and a cycle of drawings about the life of the Roma Life like a Snake.
1986 The guest worker drama Non-Smoker was performed in the National Theatre in Subotica, a project of Ljubiša Ristić, Branko Brezovac and Cocco le Mocco, Rahim Burhan and the Roma theatre Pralipa of Skopje. Trumbetaš also acted in the show. The drama was put on in Zagreb, Belgrade, Skopje, Berlin, and in 1987 in Mülheim an der Ruhr and Berlin.
1986-1987 He wrote a drama called Thief drawing on his experience as a prisoner in Stara Gradiška.
1987 He went back to Frankfurt, where he had several jobs as a labourer.
1989 Went on working with the cycle Life like a Snake.
1990-1991 He worked on the cycle of drawings and pictures in honour of Van Gogh, entitled Lieber Vincent / Dear Vincent.
1991 He started work on the cycle Human Dump, in which his subject was prison life in Stara Gradiška. He got a prize from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia for the drama Thief. Bogdan Žižić shot the documentary film Dragutin Trumbetaš for CRT, Zagreb.
1992 The exhibition Dragutin Trumbetaš – Dragi Vincent: paintings and drawings 1990 -1992, Josip Račić Studio, Zagreb. In Podsused he showed the cycle Orwell 1984-1991 – the time of death, in which his subject was the Homeland War. He worked on the book Frankfurt mein – Wirtshaft dein with sixty drawings from various cycles.
1992-1993 He worked on a book of gastarbeiter poems.
1993 Work on the books Ex libris 1984 – 1994, Gastarbeiter, Bankfurt ist Krankfurt.
1994 In Römerhalle, Frankfurt am Main, he exhibited over 120 drawings and documents entitled Gastarbeiter in Frankfurt 1965 – 1985
1995 He created coloured drawings, Turopoljska križna dreva, for a calendar published in 1996.
1996 Trumbetaš completed the third part of the drama trilogy Non-Smoker entitled Der Kassierer / The Cashier.
1996-1997 Rank of Reader, at the Kronberger Malschule for beginners, Kronberg.
1997 A retrospective exhibition Drago Trumbetaš – Works: 1957 – 1997 was held in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. He did watercolours for the cycle Miraculous Journeys by Ship along the Main and the Rhine, published in 1999 in Burgerhaus Nied, Frankfurt am Main.
1998 Trumbetaš wrote a synopsis for a film The Mole / Der Maulwurf, and wrote a text in Kaikavian dialect, Dying of the Grandma.
2001 A monograph called Trumbetaš was published, in which many renowned domestic and foreign experts wrote about the work of this artist; ed. Tonko Maroević, published in Velika Gorica, Pučko otvoreno učilište.
2003 He completed the album In Honour of A. G. Matoš, which he had started in 1999. Work in progress is the cycle Ballad of Petrica Kerempuh, after the poem of Krleža. He continues to illustrate various books.
2006 Bogdan Žižić made the film Dear Vincent, following up the letters from the imaginary correspondence of Trumbetaš and Vincent van Gogh.
2008 He completed the first book of the planned tetralogy Smokers and Non-Smokers.
Drago Trumbetaš has exhibited at about 170 individual and about 180 collective exhibitions at home and abroad. He lives and works in Frankfurt am Main and Velika Mlaka.
| PABLO PICASSO Prints From July 08 until September 28, 2008 |
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Exhibition opening, July 08. 2008 |
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Exhibition layout |
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From July 8 to September 28, 2008, the Museum of Modern Art in Dubrovnik will be showing graphics by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), emblematic author of modern art and one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
Three representative series of Picasso graphics: Suite Vollard, La Tauromaquia and Suite 156 will be borrowed from Germany (Kunstmuseum Mülheim an der Ruhr in der Alten Post) and Switzerland (private collections) with coordination from the initiator of the exhibition, Miloš Glavurtić. The exhibition will take place under the patronage of the City of Dubrovnik.
Suite Vollard, highly valued by art critics as the most important series of prints in the twentieth century, was created between 1930 and 1937 and has 100 prints, 89 of which will be shown at the Museum of Modern Art in Dubrovnik. It was named after the initiator of the project, Ambroise Vollard, distinguished art dealer and gallerist, who collaborated closely with Pablo Picasso.
Graphics of the Suite Vollard (etchings, aquatint, drypoint) have five major themes: the Battle of Love, the Sculptor's Studio, the Minotaur, the Blind Minotaur, and they include three portraits of Ambroise Vollard.
Inspired by classical antiquity and stylistically ranging from neoclassical purity and serenity to fierce dynamic lines, these graphics are marked by superb technique.
La Tauromaquia (1957) has 26 prints (aquatint) and shows scenes from the bull fight, characteristic of Spanish culture. For its excellence of execution, La Tauromaquia is often compared with graphics that treat the same subject, by Picasso's compatriot, painter Francisco de Goya (1746-1828).
Graphics from the series Suite 156 (etchings, aquatint, drypoint) from which 20 prints will be shown at the Museum of Modern Art in Dubrovnik were executed during the last years of the artist's life (1970-1972) and might be labelled a kind of "graphic testament". What is fascinating is the fact that the artist at the age of ninety and more, works at such a frenetic rhythm, creating a great number of excellent graphics that summarize his various thematic preoccupations and visual experiments, with a marked erotic component.
In its presentation of these crucial series of prints, the exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in Dubrovnik offers a chronological (1930-1972) and thematic view of the printmaking work of Pablo Picasso, who achieved unsurpassed results in one more field of artistic expression.
Pablo Picasso
http://picasso.tamu.edu/picasso/
Suite Vollard
www.sapergalleries.com/PicassoVollardDetail217.html
www.sapergalleries.com/PicassoVollardDetail148.html
www.galerieattienette.com/Pablo%20Picasso.htm
www.39ymas.com/temas/cultura/vollard/
www.editorialsanmillan.org/picasso.html
www.portaltaurino.com/exposiciones/picasso_sevilla_2003.htm
www.arsliber.com/obra/Picasso/index.htm
www.teknemedia.net/pagine-gialle/artisti/pablo_picasso/dettaglio-mostra/2244.html
www.expo-int.com/web2005/exposiciones/IGA/aleman/pressekitpicasso.pdf
La Tauromaquia
www.franklinbowlesgallery.com/SF/Artists/Picasso/Pages/sf_pica_tauro_home.html
www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/picasso14.html
www.march.es/arte/ingles/palma/anteriores/tauromaquia/temporal.asp
www.art-perfect.de/goya-und-picasso-im-wallraf-museum-koeln.htm
Suite 156
www.hlmd.de/ar.print/w3.php?nodeId=392
www.artscenecal.com/Announcements/0905/LSacks0905.html
w3art.es/murciacultural/archivo/000236.php
| FROM THE HOLDINGS OF THE MUSEUM Croatian art from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first century Curated by Petra Golušić, Rozana Vojvoda May 31th. -June 30th., 2008 |
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The exhibition From the Holdings of the Museum-Croatian art from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first century is conceived as a chronological overview of Croatian art from the end of nineteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first century with a stress on the medium of painting. In line with the character of the collection, it primarily presents the works of painters of Dubrovnik area. Along with a great number of works by Vlaho Bukovac, the founder of Croatian modern painting, the visitor is confronted with works by painters such as Marko Rašica, Niko Miljan, Ignjat Job, Gabro Rajčević, Ivan Ettore, Josip Colonna, Ivo Dulčić, Antun Masle, Đuro Pulitika, Josip Trostman, Josip Škerlj, Viktor Šerbu, Lukša Peko and other authors. Furthermore, the exhibition presents classics of Croatian modern art such as, Oskar Herman, Vladimir Becić, Emanuel Vidović, Menci Klement Crnčić, Ljubo Babić, Milivoj Uzelac, Marino Tartaglia and other authors. Works of abstract or on the border of abstract art are represented with authors such as Oton Gliha, Frano Šimunović, Ljubo Ivančić, Ferdinand Kulmer, Edo Murtić, Zlatko Prica, Ivan Kožarić, Marijan Jevšovar, Julije Knifer, Duje Jurić, Igor Rončević and other authors.
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The characteristic of the Dubrovnik of our time is the disproportion between its wonderful heritage and the inferiority of the present. The loss of real contact between the historical draft and today’s living and social practice creates numerous misunderstandings, and, in consequence, negligence and violence with respect to its material and spiritual structure and accordingly damage of various kinds and degrees of intensity. The most visible devastations are those that happen in two ways. There is the way of nature, with a century of passive human assistance, which in the last few years resulted in the collapse of some of the emblematic sites and features of the city (the city waterfront, Orlando’s Column, the apse of the cathedral, the Church of St Blaise...); and there is the active, through the immediate activity of the human factor - a combination of destruction from outside (the recent war) and new construction industry activity that has well nigh the same results. This refers to the ruthless inroads into the old architectural and urban fabric, the devastation of the landscape with aggressive new construction, extensions, extra storeys added on, encroachments into the existing structure with new materials. Compounding this structural and material aspect, in most of the cases there is of course the lack of any proper contemporary spiritual recreation of the values inherited from the past. Instead of current contribution to and continuity of production that follows the historical intensity and criteria, most cultural phenomena might be described as the products of the saprophyte syndrome and the culture of incest. Here we are referring to the appropriation of the heritage and its exploitation without any genuine productivity, on the whole mimicked in the sepia black of paeans, odes and hymns to the past, beauty and exclusiveness of the town; with gratuitous expressions of love and pride in the passive circumstance of happening belong to the city and the clime. Of course, the consequence of such a psychology and behaviour is quite often unpleasant self-enclosure, xenophobia, the will and practice for everything to be distributed and dispensed inside the walls. From this comes the incompetence of the different responsible departments in this little area of big demands, which results in damage that compounds the things already mentioned. A City that has recently been attacked by corporate ambitions, a City that, because of the extremely expensive real properties, the indigenous population has been rapidly abandoning, is increasingly turning into a ghost, a mere backdrop, a voided stone shell with an artificial agenda.
In such conditions, the artists that work in the Dubrovnik area too are in a very particular position. City and landscape exert pressures and impose obligations with their history and their still surviving - in spite of everything - beauty, requiring positions to be taken, enforcing a motif. There is an uncommonly large number of individuals in the area who deal with art, but a lot of them alas have fallen victim to the intensity of the milieu, forgetting the fact that mere dwelling in the place, resorting to uncritical admiration of its heritage and givens, the shield of its pedigree, cannot of themselves be any warrant for the quality of the art object. The luxury of history and visual spectacle combined with devotion to the stereotypes of meridional luxuriance with peremptory appropriation of the self-satisfied clichés of expressionist “vehemence”, of colourism as a mere given, the imperatives of the region and similar simplifications often result in loss of scale, weakness of structure and poverty of expression. For this reason those creative minds here who are more determined, more ambitious, are forced to act at once in line with and in opposition to the ambience in which they happen to be. In conjunction with its original idea of harmony and moderation, and against the inveterate customs of the passive exploitation of the natural and historical ground. Certainly, for such an activity, along with talent, a particular grit and composure is needed, courage to think critically, ability to resist the threat of neutering hedonism. All the more so because of the geographical isolation of the place, which is an additional handicap. In such endeavours, along with basic education in the secondary art school in the town and training in academies in larger centres at home or abroad, which many young Dubrovnik people have passed through, a particularly important role is played by the city art institutions and powertrains, such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Lazareti Art Workshop. While the first for decades used to perform its role in extensive exhibition and museological activity, supporting on the whole only local and insufficiently demanding trends and casual, uninvolved production, in the last years there have been visible endeavours to strengthen its presence in the time, that is, along with the set historical and modern values, the presentation of contemporary events has been beefed up, including some of the most important phenomena and artists in the world. In conjunction with a dynamic impulse given to art events, the promotion of international and local values, the MMAD has a direct and latent educational function for both the young generation, still at school, and the older, more traditional public. But of particular significance is the now almost twenty-year-long work of the Lazareti Art Workshop, the manager of which is also the most prominent artist in Dubrovnik, Slaven Tolj. The programmes of Lazareti Art Workshop, which involve and create an impressive international traffic of contemporary artists, musicians, creators of films and plays, as well as theorists of all descriptions, not only have their own audience, but have in large part catalysed the existing local creative potentials. All young artists who have had the basic inner preconditions and the will for working with thorny issues, including those who have been trained to BFA level, many of whom after receiving their degrees had their first exhibitions in Otok, have depended on, worked with and been cheered by work with LAW (ARL). Today, LAW, in spite of problems with the local administration and frequent obstructions in being able to claim official status, and hence to work without encumbrance, is a powerhouse with national and international pedigrees, with an impressive frequency of activities and programmes, particularly if one bears in mind the very small number of people involved in devising and accomplishing them. In this way, for quite some time, the contemporary art scene in Dubrovnik has been consolidated and considerably stepped up, and now, along with the older artists, a considerably number of gifted younger people are at work, accomplishing exemplarily problem-related works, referring to local issues but also relevant at a global level. At the exhibition 19 contemporary artists from Dubrovnik are presented, both those who live and work in the City, and those who dwell elsewhere, but in experience and/or subject are essentially a part of this region. These are almost entirely young people, in a range from the oldest, internationally known artist Slaven Tolj (born in 1964) to the youngest, still a student,
Ervin Babić (1983).
All of them are consciously engaged on the survival of the town’s spiritual life, on a recreation of its energy and vitality. At the same time, the manner in which they think and express themselves is universal and recognisable everywhere the will for a creative presence in one’s own space and time is practised. Neither ignoring it nor skipping it, but on the contrary dealing with the site of one’s origin and dwelling, they at the same time endeavour to and manage to set up contact with the remainder of the contemporary artistic world.
Antun Maračić
| ZLATAN DUMANIĆ / Best Exhibition Award by HDLU in 2008 Rodrigina 2, Split Curator: Antun Maračić |
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The Zlatan Dumanić exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art, Dubrovnik, is an event that has the author’s own particular living and working space as its topic. Consistently, then, the title of the exhibition, as well as the definition of the medium involved, is in fact the address of the artist’s dwelling in Split – Rodrigina 2.
For Dumanić is an uncommon specimen of an artist in whom the border between the secular living function and the working of the artist hardly seems to exist. Or perhaps better to say, his living space is a site of osmosis among objects of utilitarian purpose (for food, personal hygiene, relaxation and so on) and artefacts or artistic objects. In fact this is a living ambience contaminated with art from the ground up. Everyday objects are attacked with “viruses” and, accordingly, with formations of an entirely personal and individual imagination. They supplement each other, combine, are reformed in fragile amalgamations with foreign bodies of an originally different purpose – with toys, souvenirs, items of ephemeral aesthetics, cobbler’s lasts, parts of mannequins from displays, advertising photographs. Household furnishings turn into surfaces for the inditing of thoughts, slices of the stream of consciousness, a collage of images, and brushes, from being tools for painting products, turn into objects-sculptures, and become neighbours of the author’s artistic handworks, paintings of sculptures in the more precise sense.
Often, it seems, in this way the daily function of things and space are thus challenged or jeopardised, and for the observer, the guest user from outside, are usable more as a particular kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, or perhaps an exotic ambience of a primarily aesthetic purpose, while for the artist, such a spatial organisation is probably a desirable setting for enhanced action, one in which he feels absolutely at home.
From the given features of the way the artist lives and creates his work came the particularity of the actual exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in Dubrovnik The exhibition, along with a particular presentation of the author’s characteristic one-off hand-made books and several two-dimensional works, consists of two structural components: of photographs of fairly large dimensions of various parts of the dwelling known as Rodrigina 2, Split, and some of the authentic three-dimensional objects, or agglomerations of them, presented in a fairly loose set-up, regularly in some relationship with the scenes in the photos.
The duality of the gallery-dwelling is thus a constant of the differing segments of the exhibition, and are a correlative of the flickering duality and uncertainty of character of the objects: is it a matter of merely some use object in the gallery, or something that is on the way to becoming art, or that is already a work of art, dubiously, or without any hedging?
Stimulating questions, doubtless, as much as they are totally superfluous. For Zlatan Dumanić must be one of the few people busily at work in art in whom the pure necessity to create, the equivalent of some irresistible need to play, overshadows any care for the significance and fate of his own piece of work. (A.M.)
Zlatan Dumanić was born in 1951 in Split. He graduated from secondary school in Split in 1969 and Maritime College in Split (1972), and passed his captain’s exam in 1979. He spent over twenty years at sea – as cadet, officer and commander of ships belonging to various companies from at home and abroad. He is a self-taught artist whose work in the field started in 1969 as a part of the alternative branch of the Red Peristyle, Group 3i, a member of which was Vladimir Dodig Trokut, who is very close to Dumanić. He started exhibiting in 1970 and has so far appeared in some thirty individual and taken part in a large number of collective shows at home and abroad. In 2005, with five more artists, he represented Croatia at the 51st Venice Biennale. He is the author of number of multimedia actions, performances and several author’s books, collections of poems and librettos. He has been a member of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists of Split since 1986, and has been a member of the Croatian Union of Freelance Artists, Zagreb, since 2001. He lives and works in Split.
Address: Zlatan Dumanić, Rodrigina 2, 21 000 Split, Croatia
Cell phone: +385 (0)98 582 060