Zoran Mu\u0161i\u010d was a perpetual traveler through the twentieth century. He was born on
\nFebruary 12th, 1909 in Bukovica, a village next to the Karst Plateau above Trieste near Gorizia and
\nthe Gorizia Hills. His Slovenian family (his parents and their two sons) was forced from the area by
\nthe thundering artillery of the Isonzo Front. They found refuge in Styria and Carinthia, where they
\nremained until November 1920, when they settled as refugees in the newly established Kingdom of
\nSerbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Young Zoran attended school in Maribor for ten years. After graduating
\nfrom the teacher\u2019s college, he found himself in bustling Zagreb, where he continued his education at
\nthe Academy of Fine Arts. During his first year, he was taught by various professors, including the
\npainter Vladimir Beci\u0107 and the graphic artist Tomislav Krizman. In his second year, he decided to
\ncontinue his studies under the charismatic Ljubo Babi\u0107. This painter, scenographer, designer, art
\nhistorian, and friend of the prominent Croatian writer Miroslav Krle\u017ea accompanied the Slovenian
\nartist up to his graduation and for decades onward. Babi\u0107 was always good at selecting the most
\ntalented students, including the Slovenians Gabrijel Stupica and Marij Pregelj.<\/p>\n
During the 1930s, young painters developed as artists and shaped their personalities in
\nZagreb, a large city that was the most cosmopolitan in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Students visited
\ntheaters, cinemas, and exhibitions by George Grosz and French painters, and especially Picasso. They
\nfelt they were at the center of Europe rather than on its periphery. Up until his heyday in Paris, Mu\u0161i\u010d
\nbuilt on his experiences from the Zagreb school, including the influences of Antun Motika, Vjekoslav
\nPara\u0107, Emanuel Vidovi\u0107, and others. His 1935 excursion to Spain was inspired by Babi\u010d\u2019s advice at the
\nacademy, where they had looked for the starting points of the colors and light used by impressionist
\npainters in Goya and his predecessors, and on this trip Mu\u0161i\u010d also learned more about a socially and
\npolitically more advanced country than Yugoslavia. He followed his mentor step by step, and he
\ngradually established his own style.<\/p>\n
The second chapter of Mu\u0161i\u010d\u2019s path to artistic independence was stimulated by his visits to
\nDalmatia, the first ones documented in 1934 and the last ones in 1940 at Cavtat. Almost every
\nsummer, the talented painter visited the island of Kor\u010dula, where he created a series of gouache
\npaintings featuring women selling fruit, the karst landscape, donkeys, and markets. He spent time
\nwith Croatian, Slovenian, Swiss, and other artists on the island. Andro Vid Mihi\u010di\u0107, an art historian
\nfrom the Sorbonne, who succeeded Babi\u0107 at the Zagreb Academy after leaving the Franciscan order
\nin 1947, was most likely among the initiators of the gatherings and discussions on painting. By 1941,
\nMu\u0161i\u010d and other members of the Club of Independent Slovenian Visual Artists gradually formed the
\ncore of the most promising individuals involved in the arts in Slovenia. Their work and skills, perhaps
\nmore developed than those of their literary counterparts, laid the foundations for the envisioned
\nSlovenian academy of fine arts.<\/p>\n
After the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded and divided by the Axis forces, life changed for
\neveryone. Mu\u0161i\u010d was greatly impacted by the war, especially by his experience of the Dachau
\nconcentration camp. The Gestapo arrested the painter in October 1944 in Venice, where he was
\nindirectly involved in rescuing Allied pilots. Because he refused to join the Home Guard, he was sent
\nto the infamous concentration camp. He used to point out that suffering among the dead and dying
\nat Dachau had a life-long effect on him. As a mature artist and a changed man, Mu\u0161i\u010d returned to his
\nhomeland optimistically, carrying with him hundreds of drawings depicting the dead and a booklet of
\nRembrandt reproductions. However, he soon left Ljubljana in disillusion to escape political pressures
\nand moved to Venice. After the Second World War, Zagreb, with Babi\u0107, was the first Yugoslav city to<\/p>\n
welcome him. Up until 1956, Mu\u0161i\u010d could not obtain a visa to visit his friends and relatives in the new
\nYugoslavia. However, in Zagreb he was able to display two of his drawings from Dachau, which he
\nreferred to as his \u201clife academy,\u201d as early as 1954 at one of his mentor\u2019s exhibitions. Europe was only
\nable to appreciate the importance of these drawings at the grand exhibition Arte e Resistenza in
\nEuropa (Art and the Resistance in Europe), held in Bologna in 1965.<\/p>\n
In the 1950s, Mu\u0161i\u010d nostalgically introduced colorful little horses and karst landscapes into
\nhis motifs, with which he moved from Venice to Paris. Restless little horses were the core of his
\ntapestry for the steamboat Augustus and the ornamentation for the Dornacher residence near
\nZ\u00fcrich. New visits to his relatives in Slovenia and friends in Istria and Dalmatia, together with the
\nParis trends, drove the little horses from his easel. The motifs grew into a noble color harmony of
\nseemingly abstract, sunlit landscapes. In all of this, Mu\u0161i\u010d was among the most frequent exhibitors at
\nthe International Graphic Biennial in Ljubljana and he was a window into the world for young
\nSlovenian artists. He was a respected member of the Paris School (the \u00c9cole de Paris), a famous
\nEuropean artist that staged one presentation after another of timeless paintings and well-thought-
\nout graphics at the world\u2019s best-known galleries.<\/p>\n
In the 1970s, the painter used a new, acrylic technique to harken back to his most painful
\nmemories\u2014that is, the figures of people suffering. He depicted on canvas with great mastery what
\nPaul Celan and Ismail Kadare had expressed in words. From camp victims, the mute dead turned into
\nan everlasting message and warning: \u201cWe are not the last.\u201d With his Dachau cycles, the artist
\ncompletely astonished the connoisseurs of modern trends and attempts at the Avantgarde, and also
\ngallery owners. With their everlasting expressiveness and explanations provided by Zoran Kr\u017ei\u0161nik
\nand, later on, Jean Clair, Mu\u0161i\u010d\u2019s humanized depictions of the dead from the camps impressed the
\nworld. This was followed by vegetal motifs of burned oaks with an implied will to live. During the
\nwaning period of his life, the painter created series of Venetian panoramas and cathedrals with
\nmultiple meanings. The lonely thinker with impaired vision increasingly kept himself to his studio. He
\ncreated old-age portraits of himself and his wife, and he quietly continued his friendship with
\nFran\u00e7ois Mitterrand. The artist died on May 25th, 2005 in Venice.<\/p>\n
Precisely eighty-five years after Zoran Mu\u0161i\u010d graduated from the Zagreb academy under
\nLjubo Babi\u0107, Galerija Zala is displaying a selection of the artist\u2019s creative work in Ljubljana. Mu\u0161i\u010d\u2019s
\nearly work is also included in this year\u2019s exhibition \u201cNa robu\u201d (On the Brink), held at the Museum of
\nModern Art in Ljubljana. Older paintings herald his artistic development during the 1930s, and others
\nshow the highlights of one of the last twentieth-century classical painters, the quality of whose work
\ntook him from the margins to the very center of the European fine arts. Regardless of its dimensions,
\neach painting speaks for itself.<\/p>\n
To mark the 110th anniversary of Zoran Mu\u0161i\u010d\u2019s birth, the gallery is putting on display
\ncertified originals that are usually hidden away in private homes. Even more than a decade ago,
\nwhen Mu\u0161i\u010d was still somewhat ignored in Slovenia, the exhibitions at Galerija Zala confirmed that
\nthis European artist was present not only in major galleries in Venice, Paris, and New York. After a
\nseries of six exhibitions of works from private collections held in Ljubljana, Belgrade, London, and
\nVienna, the painter continues to return to the Slovenian cultural capital, where he is featured in a
\npermanent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.<\/p>\n
The older paintings displayed at Galerija Zala document Mu\u0161i\u010d\u2019s prewar creative work,
\nespecially in Dalmatia and Ljubljana. A high-quality shift in his work is his popular postwar series of
\ncolorful little Dalmatian horses, followed by the karst landscapes between Istria and Primo\u0161ten
\ninspired by Tachism. The core and highlight of his artistic expression are his famous depictions of dead victims at concentration camps entitled We Are Not the Last. Similarly informative are his
\nburned oak trunks filled with life energy. The selection of works presented also features Venetian
\nlandscapes, the atmosphere inside cathedrals, and portrait presentations of the painter and his wife
\nin their old age. Mu\u0161i\u010d incorporated the entire destiny of a reflective and sensitive humanist of the
\nsecond half of the twentieth-century into his artistic message. The academy-trained painter
\nremained faithful to drawing, graphics, and canvas, and the motifs he became familiar with during his
\nstudies. Nonetheless, he developed his artistic expression to unimagined depths unaffected by
\ntradition or fashionable isms. He always remained faithful to his maxim: \u201cI paint for myself because I
\nhave to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gojko Zupan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zoran Mu\u0161i\u010d was a perpetual traveler through the twentieth century. He was born on February 12th, 1909 in Bukovica, a village next to the Karst Plateau above Trieste near Gorizia and the Gorizia Hills. His Slovenian family (his parents and their two sons) was forced from the area by the thundering artillery of the Isonzo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galerijazala.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galerijazala.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galerijazala.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galerijazala.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galerijazala.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.galerijazala.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2715,"href":"https:\/\/www.galerijazala.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions\/2715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galerijazala.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galerijazala.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galerijazala.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galerijazala.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}