– MARIJAN TREPŠE, WOMAN WITH CAT, ABOUT 1931, (OIL ON CANVAS, 905 X 1100 MM), PRIVATE PROPERTY

MARIJAN TREPŠE (Zagreb, 1897 – Zagreb, 1964) Marijan Trepše finished the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in the breaking year 1918 in the class of Professor Bela Čikoš-Sesija. In that early period he mostly paints under the influence of Miroslav Kraljević. Soon after the end of the First World War he leaves for Prague to study at the Academy, where he is mainly concerned in graphics, and gets a chance to become familiar with the works of German expressionism. Thereafter follows a stay in Paris between 1920 and 1922, where he works at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere, and meets the paintings of Maurice de Vlaminck, which will result as exceptionally important for his later artistic creations. In that period he is exceptionally inclined to social themes and finds inspiration in city’s everyday scenes, preserving a kind of classicist tone in their accomplishments. In 1930-ies his palette becomes brighter and the forms more open. At that time he often paints nature motifs of Zagreb surroundings and of the Adriatic. He was also concerned with religious themes – especially Golgotha – which he treated with subtle feeling for the drama of the moment; however, he did not neglect in his paintings neither nudes, portraits nor still lives. Together with Uzelac, Gecan and Varlaj Trepše belonged to the Group of Four, participating at all exhibitions of the Spring Salon between 1919 and 1928. In Zagreb he exposed at solo exhibitions on six occasions, and later also in 1942 and 1962. A posthumous exhibition of his works was organised in 1969 while the retrospectives took place in 1975 and 2011. A great part of his life - even 32 years - he dedicated to the scenographic work in the Croatian National Theatre, where he created more than hundred scenes for numerous dramas and operas, as Pirandello’s Henry IV, Verdi’s Force of Destiny or Ero from the Other World by J. Gotovac - to mention just a few. Marijan Trepše is of the most important representatives of Croatian expressionism, i.e. of the inter-war Croatian art in general. Oil on canvas Woman with Cat Trepše painted about 1931. The painting is dominated by a seated woman figure in the foreground. She put her hands on her thighs and in between there is a black cat. Slanted eyes of the woman and cat have something in common but their gazes are focused in different directions. The gaze of the cat actually follows the direction of woman’s hands and thighs while the woman’s gaze seems to follow the diagonal of the bench and the table in the background at which three men play cards and the fourth one is watching. The entire room is in fact intersected with diagonal flux lines, what makes it gliding and unstable. Although they share the same room, between the woman in the foreground and the four men in the background there is no communication. In this painting Trepše succeeded in creating an indeed unusual amalgam of seductiveness, alienation and ill-omen. Vanja Babić