ŽELJKO SENEČIĆ – Oils on Canvas, Oils on Glass, Pastels, and Drawings / A Critical Anthology

Željko Senečić: Cirkus rex / Circus Rex, 1985

Željko Senečić
Oils on Canvas, Oils on Glass, Pastels, and Drawings / A Critical Anthology
March 30 – May 14, 2017

The aim of the solo exhibition of Željko Senečić (1933) – painter and set designer, and television, film and theatre director – co-organised at the beginning of 2017 by Klovićevi Dvori Gallery and Croatian Museum of Naïve Art, is to mark and remember the author’s continuous, 60-year exhibition activity. The project has been conceived as critical and anthological presentation with a partially retrospective character. It encompasses several different art techniques in which the artist expressed himself: paintings on canvas and glass, pastels, and drawings. The exhibition will feature 55 works, and all of the artist’s significant and characteristic thematic preoccupations will be

presented.

The paintings on glass, with which Senečić accomplished his most stratified and

Željko Senečić: Dvorište / Yard, 1971

personal works, are the most numerous. His superb mastery in this technique becomes evident in the fact that his works are exemplarily colouristically implemented, with extremely rich colours and, in terms of execution, often in an abstract, even tachismic procedure. The artist therewith joined several Croatian painters who, in a métier sense, brought this old technique – the Hinterglasmalerei – to such virtuosity and perfection that they are nearly without equal in 20^th century art at the world level (Krsto Hegedušić, Ivan Generalić, and other classics of the Hlebine School: Gaži, Večenaj, Kovačić, etc.). It is also important to note that the author was given the Grand Prix for painting – precisely for his paintings on glass – at the prestigious Salon des Nations in Paris in 1984.

Željko Senečić: Hotel, 1984

Alongside paintings owned by HMNU, the Collection of Modern Art, the exhibition will also feature works owned by the author, as well as those from several private collections. Senečić’s film records on individual artists – Vaništa, Dora Maar, Jagoda Buić, Knifer, Džamonja, Pulitika, Mušič, Croatian painters in Paris – will be shown daily throughout the duration of the exhibition.

The exhibition will be on show on the ground floor of the Gallery from March to May 2017.

Exhibition author is Vladimir Crnković.

HMNU curator is Filip Turković Krnjak.

GKD curator is Danijela Marković.