COLLECTION
Founded in 1945, the intention being that it should collect, keep, study, exhibit and publicise the fine arts material of the modern and contemporary period, the Museum of Modern Art, Dubrovnik, has to date managed to assemble a valuable collection of 2804 works of art, via its purchases, donations and gifts.
In the modern art collection, covering the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries to the end of World War II, the most represented are pieces by artists related in some way to the Dubrovnik area, whose works nevertheless went far beyond mere regional and even national importance. This is primarily relevant to the high quality and copious collection of works by Vlaho Bukovac ( 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 ) (288 works), the painter who first brought into Croatian art ideas concerning plein air painting, as well as the collection of pictures (dominated by landscapes) of Mato Celestin Medović.
Most of our art is by the Dubrovnik painters whose work was created more or less up to the end of World War II. These are Niko Miljan, Marko Murat, and Marko Rašica, with an ample selection of works of Ignjat Job and the painters Gabro Rajčević and Ivan Ettore, both of whom died young, with their very particular meridional version of Expressionism.
The collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Dubrovnik also possesses a large number of works by classics of Croatian modern painting such as Emanuel Vidović, Mirko Rački, Menci Clement Crnčić, Miroslav Kraljević, Vladimir Becić, Oskar Herman, Milivoj Uzelac, Vilko Gecan, Ljubo Babić, Marino Tartaglia, as well as classics of modern sculpture like Ivan Meštrović, Frano Kršinić, and Robert Frangeš Mihanović.
VLAHO BUKOVAC
Young artist
Oil on canvas, 1914
In the contemporary art collection, comprising of artworks created since the end of World War II, there are examples of classic media such as sculpture, painting and printmaking, but in the last ten or so years a significant amount of photographs, videos and artistic installations has been collected. The presence of Dubrovnik artists is of particular significance in the collection of modern and contemporary painting.
This includes the capacious repertoire of Ivo Dulčić ( 1 / 2 / 3 ), Antun Masle, and Đuro Pulitika, all of whose creative output is represented. Although works from the 1950s and 1960s dominate our collection; painters who reached the peaks of their careers, particularly locally, in the 1970s and 1980s (Branko Kovačević, Milovan Stanić, Josip Trostman and others) as well as works of younger painters whose work belongs to the beginnings of this century and, provisionally speaking, to the art of post-modernism (Viktor Daldon, Ivan Skvrce) also take pride of place.
The collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Dubrovnik, shows not only Dubrovnik art, but also works from a heterogeneous cross-section of the Croatian art scene in general.
There are members of Exat 51, (a group that in the fifties represented in Croatia the principles of geometrical abstraction, particularly works of Ivan Picelj, Vjenceslav Richter and Aleksandar Srnec;) works by members of Gorgona (a group from the turn of the fifties and sixties), including those of Julije Knifer, Josip Vaništa, Marijan Jevšovar and Ivan Kožarić ( 1 / 2 ); members of the New Tendencies (a group from the sixties and seventies) are represented by works of Vojin Bakić and Miroslav Šutej.
The almost complete suspension of figuration is represented by the oils on canvas of Oton Gliha and Fran Šimunović; the genesis of Abstract Expression by the oils on canvas of Edo Murtić; the tendency to Surrealism by the paintings of Miljenko Stančić; the tendencies of Art Informel by the pictures of Ljubo Ivančić (end of the fifties, early sixties).
MARIJAN JEVŠOVAR
Destruction of the surface
Oil on canvas, 1976
The second half of the 20th century sculptors shown are Ivan Kožarić, Branko Ružić, Dušan Džamonja, Ksenija Kantoci, Kosta Angeli Radovani, Vanja Radauš and others. As for artists who made their reputations on the Croatian scene in the 1970s and 1980s, the Museum possesses works of Igor Rončević, Željko Jerman, Duje Jurić, Goran Trbuljak and Braco Dimitrijević.
The newly created photographs, videos and artistic installations section contains the remarkable Magnum photos of Mladen Tudor, the photographs of Ivan Kožarić, the war photographs of Damir Fabijanić, photographs of the Dubrovnik photographer Pavo Urban who was killed still in his youth in the Homeland War and works of Dubrovnik photographers of the younger generation (Mara Bratoš, for example).
The collection of videos and installations contains works of post-conceptual artists who made their names in the nineties: Slaven Tolj, Alen Floričić, Boris Šincek, Pasko Burđelez and others.
The collection of the Museum, as well as very clearly documenting the artistic life of Dubrovnik, possesses works that allow it to epitomise the heterogeneity and richness of artistic production in Croatia, in some cases with a very rich selection of works. Since 2006, the Museum of Modern Art in Dubrovnik has obtained, by purchase and donations, the works of modern painters from the city such as Marko Rašica, Ivan Ettore and Đuro Pulitika (a donation of 76 pieces) and works of contemporary Croatian artists: Mladen Tudor, Dragutin Trumbetaš, Slaven Tolj, Pavo Urban, Boris Šincek, Pasko Burđelez, Zlatan Dumanić, Alen Floričić, Goran Trbuljak, Viktor Daldon, Ivan Skvrce, and Ivana Pegan-Baće.
The Museum is also in the process of enhancing its collection with the works of international artists, such as the contemporary Belgian multimedia artist Jan Fabre, who in 2006 donated three works to the Museum of Modern Art, Dubrovnik.
DUJE JURIĆ
Untitled (dyptich)
acrylic on cardboard and MDF, 1999