CROATIAN FINE ART, Robert Auer

Robert Auer, Kraj crvenog svjetla (End of the red light), 1911, (oil on canvas, 85.3 x 150 cm) A painter Robert Auer (Zagreb, 1873 - 1952) studied in Zagreb, Vienna and Munich, where he was the only Croatian painter to take part in the exhibition of the Munich Secession (1896). He is one of the founders of the Society of Croatian Artists (1897) and the Croatian section of the Association of Yugoslav Artists "Lada" (1904). In 1898, with his wife Leopoldina Auer Schmidt, he opened a private art school in Zagreb. In 1900 he won the special recognition for art at the World Exposition in Paris. In 1905 he started working as a professor at the Zagreb School of Crafts and in 1907 he participated in the founding of the Arts and Crafts College, where he was also a professor. He continued his artistic endeavours in France, Italy and the United States (1901 - 1902). The experience of the Central European idealized secession of the late 19th century left a decisive mark on the formation of a young painter. Thus an idealized female act - as one of the central motifs of that time - became Auer's lifelong preoccupation. He also painted still-life, portraits of friends and contemporaries and allegorical compositions, often overwhelming the author's imagination with the desire to meet the expectations of his clients and his wide audience. Therefore, his opus - despite the not very affirmative evaluation of the painter and art historian, Ljubo Babić, which was, almost unreservedly, followed by the profession throughout Auer's entire life - must be seen as a reflection of the needs of one part of the civil society in Croatia at the end of the 19th and the first decades 20th century. Oil on canvas Kraj crvenog svjetla (End of the red light) - one of Auer's mature opus magnus - is a typical painter's act of extraordinary sensuality, with an idealized feminine figure with a melancholic look in an erotic pose, and an effective contrast of red light and blue background. This work presents Auer as an artist who has been permanently marked by the spirit of the time; a talented and educated painter who has early found his 'artistic mission' and has not given up on it throughout his entire creative life, resisting the call of ever-changing modernism. Petar Prelog, Ph.D., senior scientific associate at the Institute of Art History