CROATIAN MODERN PAINTING 2005 - EDO MURTIĆ, ZADAR, 1950, OIL ON CANVAS

EDO MURTIĆ (Velika Pisanica near Bjelovar, May 4th, 1921 – Zagreb, January 2nd, 2005) The painting “Zadar” (1950) occupies an almost emblematic place in the opus of the great Croatian painter Edo Murtić, whose revolutionary gesture – his decision to opt for modern abstract painting in the first half of the 50s of the 20th century – was an opinion that carried great weight in terms of permanent changes in the course of development of Croatian modern painting so far. It was the time immediately before Murtić departed for America (1951 – 1953) where he met the leading American artists Pollock, De Kooning, Diebenkorn, and Brooks and through them was faced with the abstract expressionism and gestural painting. What we can observe on the selected painting are possibly the last deposits of French tradition of modern figurative paintings within Murtić’s opus and the last pure layers of paints deposited by the painter’s spatula in the manner of Leo Junek. In Murtić’s painting this is still the period of the so called colouristic intimism and realism, with effects of the French tradition that came to him via the painter Petar Dobrović whose painting master class Murtić attended in Belgrade between the years 1940 and 1941, as well as through his professor at the Academy of Visual Arts, Ljubo Babić. The modest register of his palette (blue, grey, greyish-brown, greyish-blue) functions as a metaphor about the town that in its urbane texture still feels the consequences of horrendous bombardment from the Second World War, and which is presently in the phase of rebuilding. The headless female statue with two Picasso-like hen-pigeons has been put in contrast to a background of demolished and spectral architecture. If we remember Murtić’s engagement in the painting of the National Liberation War period, his active participation in the partisan anti-fascist war, the cycle of war drawings and, crowning this period, the graphic illustration of the tragic poem Jama (Pit) by Ivan Goran Kovačić (1944), then we are going to experience the painter’s approach to the motif of the post-war Zadar as a continuity of Murtić’s expressed social sensibility and a criticism of the society that he had retained to the end of his life. (He was member of the Croatian Helsinki Committee of Human Rights). After returning from America to Zagreb, in 1953 and 1954 Murtić entirely changed the Croatian visual arts scene with his cycle Doživljaj Amerike (Experience of America) by abolishing the socialist-realist tendencies and, almost parallel to worldwide events, introduce abstract expressionism into Croatian modern painting, along with elements of action painting, gestural features and a luxurious palette of lively, bright colours, whose tone base he was going to retain until the end of his life: red, yellow, ultramarine blue, brown, black and white. The whole of Murtić’s opus, regardless of the thematic units (mostly landscapes) and the choice of techniques and materials (oil, acrylic paints, gouaches, graphics, enamel, drawings) will be characterized by a permanent, delicate balance between the tradition of lyric abstraction and abstract expressionism, with more or less expressed luscious colour and gestural quality that could be understood as a kind of colouristic expressionism of another wave. However, what particularly highlights Murtić among the whole generation of Croatian artists who also created the modern painting expression is the permanent vitalism and powerful vigorous, vibrant expressiveness of the work. Landscapes with motifs from Dalmatia and Istria, the Croatian islands, olive groves, vineyards, the luxurious Mediterranean vegetation, all of which Murtić painted in the period between the fifties and eighties of the last century, possess a timeless vitalism. Edo Murtić was an artist who loved life, and who put his whole being into each of his artistic tasks, without any reservations. In 1969, together with a group of artists, he founded the Zagreb Gallery Forum, which has for several decades been an absolutely meritorious gallery platform for the promotion of the best Croatian modern artists. In the last years of his life (2000 – 2005), exhibiting at several great exhibitions, Murtić showed that he had been creating his works with unprecedented force and inspiration, living and painting on the relation between Zagreb and Vrsar in Istria. The eminent art theoretician Pierre Restany, writing about Murtić in the year 2000 said that he “represents one of the greatest colourists of lyric abstraction” in the European framework and is “the international protagonist of gestural vitalism”, for whom “the real motif most frequently represents only the cause for painting but not the ultimate goal” (Zvonko Maković). Edo Murtić had his first one-man exhibition in Zagreb in 1935, and by the year 2004 he had some one hundred and fifty solo and about three hundred collective exhibitions on all continents. His works can be found in the best private and public collections worldwide. He also created theatrical scenery, murals, tapestries, mosaics and ceramics. In the year 2004 he was made regular member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.