From the Hellenistic period to Byzantium
While the first sculptures appeared on Croatian soil in the Neolithic and Copper Age, it was in the 4th century BC that Croatia developed strong links with Greek Mediterranean cultures, on the islands of Vis, Hvar and Korčula. Apoxyomene, the bronze 2 m high of an athlete naked in the toilet, was discovered in 1996 off Vele Orjule Island. Restored in Zagreb, it joined the Apoxyomene Museum in Veli Lošinj.
Dalmatia, a province of the Roman Empire, located around Split (Salona), has its own sculpture school, which produces many works, including a white marble bust of Emperor Augustus, discovered in Nin in the 20th century. After the fall of the Western Empire, Dalmatia received the Byzantine influence and the reliefs of the Baptistery and the sarcophagi of the Basilica of Split or the mosaics of the Basilica of Poreč are the best evidence of this. Illuminated manuscripts of the Sacred Museum of Zadar and the evangelists of Split Cathedral date from the 6th and 7th centuries.
In Istria, the frescoes in the church of St. Jerome (Hum), in Byzantine style, and those in the church of St. Foška near Peroj, in Romanesque style, according to French models, date from the 12th century. The wooden crucifix carved and painted from the monastery of St. Francis in Zadar is the oldest that has been discovered. The face of Christ becomes more animated and the style moves away from the Byzantine icon. They mark the beginning of Romanesque art.
In the middle of the international Gothic era, the Dalmatian school is famous in Trogir or Korčula, with the works of Blaž Jurjev, in particular. Its polyptych on wood of the church of All Saints, perfectly restored, testifies to the Italian influence. Painting also illuminates manuscripts in a sophisticated way. The most famous is the Gospel of Trogir (1231-1250).
During the Romanesque period, basilicas with several naves and apses as in Rab, Zadar and Trogir have very elaborate portals of bas-reliefs and sculptures, relating episodes of the Bible. Thus the portal of the cathedral of Split, whose wooden door is signed from the workshop of Master Buvina, that of Trogir, with the western tympanum, sculpted by Master Radovan in 1240. Moreover, in the 13th century, painters and workshops multiplied, and the personality of the master builder was confirmed, as was the influence of his influence.
From the 13th to the 15th century, the Gothic style was present in northern Croatia (Zagreb Cathedral). In Dalmatia, the development of the radiant and flamboyant Gothic style saw the emergence of the signature of the architect and sculptor Juraj Dalmatinac, who attended his schools in Venice. This complete artist worked in Split, Dubrovnik, Zadar, but it was in the cathedral of Šibenik, classified by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, that his mysterious baptistery (1443) was found, decorated with reticular structures and sculptures in the shape of stalactites, resembling a cave.
From the Renaissance to Art Nouveau
The advent of the new style found favourable ground in Ragusa (Dubrovnik), where sculptors and painters collaborated, drawing inspiration from Italian artists of the Quattrocento, not to mention the lessons of the Gothic period. In the middle of the 15th century, Lovro Dobričević first introduced three-dimensionality into the representation of his characters. It was not until the 16th century, with the painters Mihajlo Hamzić or Nicola Božidarević, that traditional structures and gold plating were freed from their traditional role and the space behind the figures was cleared.
From the 17th to the 18th century, the Baroque period developed in the north of the country in Jesuit churches and private homes (Zagreb, Varaždin, Trški Vrh, near Krapina, the castles of Hrvatsko Zagorje). On the Adriatic coast, exchanges with Venice would be beneficial to painters; Federico Benković (1677-1733), in particular, would be influential throughout Central Europe. Other Ragusan painters, Stay and Matejević (Mattei), chose Rome or Naples to train. We witness the appearance of illusionist painting on walls where gildings and mouldings, characters in weightlessness, twirling cherubs hang on.
Vlaho Bukovac (1855-1922), born in Cavtat, south of Dubrovnik, lived from his art as a draftsman and portrait painter before leaving for San Francisco and taking painting lessons. Back in Dubrovnik, Bishop Strossmayer offered him a scholarship to go to Paris where he attended the Cheramok and Cabanel workshops. We are witnessing the appearance of symbolic painting in his country. He returned to Zagreb before being appointed professor in Prague. In Cavtat, his family home has become a workshop-museum with many of his paintings on display, which represent these new trends of the Zagrebačka šarena škola and influence the formation of the secessionist movement in Croatia, with Josip Račić, Bela Čikoš-Sesija, Crnčić
Painting, a popular and profane art in the 19th century. At the end of the 18th century, the multiplication of shooting societies in Central Europe gave rise to an astonishing practice: painting shooting. Founded in 1786, the Zagreb Shooting Society brings together distinguished citizens, aristocrats and merchants, who meet during monthly meetings and shooting competitions. Attraction and entertainment are the main objectives of these outdoor events, from spring to autumn, where dances, balls, folk festivals, readings and other games are combined. Even today, the City Museum of Zagreb and the Varaždin Museum still display many of these targets, although this somewhat dangerous practice, if not regulated, has fortunately since disappeared. Exhibited at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris in 2012 on the occasion of the Croatian cultural season, they had inspired the famous and tenebrous French philosopher Annie Le Brun, who had prefaced the catalogue. These targets, which are not well known, have been particularly well preserved in Croatia, although this practice was not specific to the region. At the time, this game with its very strict rules was quite profane and the paintings painted on round canvases could represent angels and animals as well as mythological, allegorical or comic scenes, coats of arms or landscapes. The paintings show that anything can become a target: the king, the gods, the monuments, the temple and even the globe. Either intended to be chosen by the winners of shooting competitions, or commissioned to be attributed to the best shooters, and although they were painted by anonymous authors, they are an authentic testimony of a past time and a social practice reserved for the elite, yet popular in Croatia. The craftsmen who painted them, often on commission, because they were dedicated to skilled shooters, also left a vision of Croatian and Austro-Hungarian society, of which it is not insignificant to learn in order to better understand what this country with its turbulent history could have been. On the other hand, it is to see how popular painting was, even if these targets were only contemplated once they were screened. Trophy of pride and virility for these men who were engaged in this practice, these targets were unfortunately not targeted by women, who were excluded from the game. It also shows how women's rights in the region have been censored, and that they have been completely subjected to the rules of a male-dominated society, long after the 19th century. Fortunately, the young Croatian state of today has made significant progress in this regard.
The end of the 19th century in Croatia was marked by the revolutionary movements active in Europe. Inspired by the Austrian and German Secession, the painters entered Art Nouveau, which stood against traditionalism in art. The graphic arts became an autonomous mode of expression thanks to the development of lithography (Tomislav Krizman), posters, wallpaper and lettrism. Sculptors Robert Frangeš-Mihanović and Rudolph Valdec develop funeral and symbolic themes specific to the Secession style. At that time, the sculptor Ivan Meštrović, the so-called Croatian Rodin, developed a personal expressionist style.
From moderns to Croatian photography
At the beginning of the 20th century, Croatia followed the European artistic fashion of landscape on the motif (impressionism) while developing an identity theme linked to the renewal of national consciousness (Quiquerez, Mašić, Iveković). Croatian modernists went to school in Paris or Munich (Josip Račić Kraljević, Becić).
It was in Zagreb in 1939 that the first photography department was created at the Museum of Applied Arts. The birth of the Zagreb School confirmed the artistic and poetic commitment of photographers such as Bella Csikos Sessia, a Symbolist painter who was studying photography before his paintings, or Franjo Mosinger, one of Europe's first avant-garde photographers. As for Duro Janekovic (1912-1989) or Tošo Dabac (1907-1970), they inaugurated a golden age of photo-reporting for the written press. The foreign magazines Life, Stern, Paris Match, Elle, Tempo and Gente have hired many Croatian photographers, among them Tošo Dabac, known for his work during the Great Depression of 1929, Frank Horvat, fashion photographer and reporter, which are published all over the world. Since 1970, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb has held a large collection of photographs dating back to the 1920s.
From socialist realism to street art
During the inter-war period, Croatia also experienced expressionist, cubist and abstract pictorial modes (Tartaglia, Šulentić, Gecan) but the dogmas of socialist realism of the 1950s slowed down the development of the avant-garde. The era of socialist realism of the 1950s and 1960s saw many statues of illustrious or popular figures erected throughout the country. At the same time, before and after the Second World War, a naive art school was founded in Koprivnica, a village on the Hungarian border. The Hlebine Gallery and the museum dedicated to Zagreb present the history of these rural artists, the pioneers Ivan Generalić, Franjo Mraz, Mirko Virius, the second generation, Dragan Gazi, Ivan Vecenaj, Mijo Kovačić, Franjo Filipović, Martin Mehke, Krsto Hegedušić, and the great Ivan Generalić A whole tradition of popular painters who have created a regional, imaginative, original art.
In the early 1960s, the era of the "second avant-garde" began with its conceptual upheavals. Edo's lyrical abstraction Murtić, Drazen's colourful and cracked flat tints Grubišić, Zlatko Keser's raw painting, Antun's silkscreen installations Maračić or new multimedia technologies question the place of art in galleries, the artist's role in society. Few of them have managed to break into the international market, except Zoran Mušič or Andréa Andriya Filipovic.
Croatian photography is still illustrated today by the perspective of contemporary artists such as Ivan Faktor who works between photography, video and performance, and notably participated in the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995, or the conceptual artist and active on the Croatian scene until very recently Antun Maračić, but also Boris Cvjetanović who, with Ana Opalić, represented Croatia at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. Mladen Stilinović is undoubtedly the best known of these artists internationally because it is represented by several foreign galleries, notably French. He is a politically committed multimedia artist who uses photography but also all the techniques that conceptual installations require. The snapshots of Pavo Urban, who died under bombs in Dubrovnik in 1991, while working as a reporter, are striking. The massive arrival of digital technology is contributing to the emergence on the Croatian scene of a new scene of very young photographers such as Bojan Mrdenović, Luka Kedzo, Davor Konjikušić or Sinisa Glogoski.
For street art lovers, the capital has superb walls designed by Slaven Kosanović aka Lunar, born in 1975 in Zagreb, who has been spray-painting frescoes since 1993, or OKO ("the eye" in French).
The graffiti artists Morka, Dengan Skor, Mosk, Pejac come from the seaside town of Rijeka, European Capital of Culture in 2020. On this occasion, cultural events are on the agenda everywhere in the streets and museums.
