With a broad scope of activity, encompassing artistic and cultural phenomena ranging from prehistory to the present day, the Klovićevi dvori Gallery – functioning as both a museum and a gallery – actively cares for both its own holdings and collections entrusted to its safekeeping, despite not maintaining a permanent exhibition display. Today, the Gallery houses a total of seven collections: four are its own property (the Oskar Herman Collection, the Slavko Kopač Collection, the Klovićevi dvori Gallery Collection of Donated Artworks and more recently, the Kviz Collection – a donation from the Kviz family), while three have been entrusted to its care by the City of Zagreb (the Dr. Vinko Perčić Memorial Collection, the Josip Crnobori Collection and the Josip Restek Collection). All these collections are continuously presented to the public alongside the array of other exhibition the Gallery organizes as a part of its dynamic daily operations. Following the highly visited and well-received “Kviz Collection” exhibition – which showcased a small treasury of Croatian painting – and the “Restek’s Zagreb Walks” exhibition (featuring a selection from the Josip Restek Collection to mark the 110th anniversary of his birth), this year it is the turn of the Klovićevi dvori Gallery’s Collection of Donated Artworks to be presented to the public.
Like the exhibition of Restek’s works, this exhibition will open during the first week of September as part of a newly launched cultural event that, for the second consecutive year, brings together the museums of the City of Zagreb for a joint multi-day program – The Zagreb Museum Weekend – marking the very beginning of the new exhibition season.
As its name implies, the Klovićevi dvori Gallery’s Collection of Donated Artworks preserves and gathers pieces gifted to the Gallery through the generosity of artists (or their families) who exhibited at the Gallery. Its formation differs from that of the other collections managed by the Gallery; its origins date back to the 1980s, coinciding with the inception of the institution then known as the Museum Space (“Muzejski prostor”), later the Museum and Gallery Center, and known today by the public as the Klovićevi dvori Gallery.
Over time, an impressive body of artworks has been collected, currently comprising over a hundred diverse artworks, including paintings, sculptures, photographs, and print portfolios – spanning a wide range of techniques and media. While the collection includes works by international artists, it consists predominantly of pieces by Croatian artists created from the mid-20th century to the present day, such as Slavko Šohaj, Ferdinand Kulmer, Maksimilijan Vanka, Željko Hegedušić, Ivan Picelj, Josip Vaništa, Petar Barišić, Kažimir Hraste, Željko Senečić, Antun Motika and many others.
As the collection has never before been exhibited in its entirety, this marks its first public presentation – a collection that has been growing alongside the Gallery for five decades. Through this presentation of donated artworks, we express our gratitude to our donors while also defying oblivion by re-evaluating the past creative achievements of artists who shaped our recent history – this time within the context of the artworks’ lives within a museum and gallery collection. Perhaps this will inspire similar gestures from future exhibitors, for the Collection of Donated Artworks serves as a small chronicle of our exhibition history, as well as a powerful asset and foundation for the future.
Exhibition Impressum:
Author of the exhibition: Danijela Markotić
Exhibition layout: Petra Vugrinec, Danijela Markotić
Head of the GKD programme: Petra Vugrinec
Technical organisation: Dragutin Matas
Technical realisation: Davor Markotić, Tomislav Antolić, Nino Bellen, Josip Butorac, Boris Krepelnik
Educational programmes: Liljana Velkovski
PR: Anamarija Alfirev
Visual identity: Sanja Bachrach Krištofić
