CROATIAN VISUAL ARTS 2013 - B .Č. SESIJA

BELA ČIKOŠ SESIJA (Osijek, 1864 - Zagreb, 1931)

Čikoš abandoned military vocation in order to dedicate himself to art. Between 1887 and 1892 he studied art at the Vienna Academy whereupon he specialised at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in the classes of professor Wilhelm Lindenschmit and Carl von Marr. In 1893 he undertakes a study trip to Italy where he paints a series of very successful sceneries with architecture. Izidor Kršnjavi selects him as one of the younger artists to participate in furnishings and decoration of the palace of the Department for Divine Worship and Teaching in Opatička Street 10 in Zagreb. Thus, Čikoš creates works for the Pompeii Room (antique mythological themes), Renaissance Room (symbolist cycle of compositions with themes from Homer’s, Shakespeare’s, Dante’s and Goethe’s literary works) and also for the Golden Hall (representative historic composition of Baptism of Croats). For the Millennium Exhibition in Budapest in 1896 he makes a watercolour cycle of ruins of old Croatian towns. In 1898 he participates at the famous Croatian Salon exhibition in Zagreb. Together with Menci Clement Crnčić he opens a private art school in 1903. In 1907 Čikoš participates in founding of the Temporary High School for Arts and Crafts in Zagreb, today’s Academy of Fine Arts, where he was active until his death. In his entire creative work an exceptional interest for classic and Biblical themes and motifs which he interpreted with emphasized symbolism and echoes of the art-deco stylistic is noticeable. He belongs to those who introduced much more liberal presentation of the nude female body in Croatian painting.
The art historian Grgo Gamulin noted that „Sappho from1908 is the deepest and best balanced piece of art by Čikoš from that time”. After the study trip to United States of America in 1902, Čikoš inclined more to traditional ways of academic lecturing, which also resulted in a change in his own artistic approach. At that time Čikoš often repeats certain motifs, first of all the nude female bodies - e.g. he painted the motif of Salome in about twenty variations. He also painted Sappho - the ancient Greek poetess from the island of Lesbos - several times (one of the depictions can be seen on the wall of the Pompeii Room in Opatička 10), while this picture from the Modern Gallery can be perceived as a kind of summary of his entire work: here again is an antique motif accentuated with elements of content and painted with symbolist intention unified with indisputable academic knowledge and balance.