CHRISTMAS 2008

Motif: Interior (Christmas Tree), oil on paper, 1942., 47,6 x 59,5 cm, author Emanuel Vidović Christmas is not only a scene from the ancient altars and la plus riche heure of the liturgical year. It has also been a constant source of inspiration for artists and the la plus riche heure of our personal calendar. A series of historic Christmas scenes, from Croatia’s most various regions, has now been supplemented with a masterpiece by Emanuel Vidović (1870 – 1953), one of the greatest Croatian painters ever. This work of art has returned us to the twentieth century again and reminded us of the last, so recent chapter, of our verified history. Emanuel Vidović was born and died in Split. He studied in Venice and before his final return to Split he worked in Venice, Chioggia, Milan, where he started with "noon division", with disassembly of light impulses (in which context, the Italian Divisionism and the painter Segantini were mentioned, without any need for it). With his return to Dalmatia, luminosity gradually withdrew into the invisible background of his paintings and changed into the glowing dusk of the turn of the century. Almost monochrome and dark paintings by Vidović radiate the glow from the beyond. Having returned to Split, Vidović discovered Trogir, a town even more compact, a denser immenseness of his own home. An atelier, full of things filled with his soul – the things accompanying his time travel – offers countless stations to the eye and the hand: old clocks, old dolls, plates and vases, chairs and own paintings. The noon division becomes the division of a night, plenty of colours do not come out from below the sun’s hammer any more but from the walls and curtains, from the transformation of an on-site investigation into a memory. Probably there must be a reason why Vidović’s "Christmas" was put on the Croatian Christmas stamp this year. With a Christmas tree with flickering lights in the middle, with the most beautiful meal of dreams on the table, with good, tame and patient things, with the chairs facing us and only us, Emanuel Vidović is reminding us that our home is the church. That any house is the church. That there is a silent alliance against the world of violence in which not only that the animals do not speak but also that any word is being cut to the people before it leaves their mouth. Coming out from the wide into the more intensive, in this harsh year Vidović shows us the way to the rescuing reserves of freedom, to Christmas on the table, the heaven on the ceiling, to peace in our soul.