Exhibition UNKNOWN SKURJENI

10.12.2007

The exhibition AN UNKNOWN SKURJENI - Paintings, Drawings and Prints of Matija Skurjeni from the Collection of Radovan Ivsic, Paris was held in CMNA from October 25th till November 18th 2007. Altogether 18 paintings, 20 drawings and several prints were exhibited. Croatian/French poet, playwright and essayist Radovan Ivsic (1921) is a personality important in a number of ways in the life and creative work of Matija Skurjeni (1898-1990), classic of the Croatian Naïve and one of the country’s most eminent painters of Surrealist poetics. He paints reality as if it were a dream, dreams as if they were real; he turns the real and the rational into the irreal and the irrational, and in Skurjeni the impossible becomes the possible, the imaginable the feasible. It was in fact these features that brought the painter and the celebrated Surrealist writer together. Ivsic published his first piece about Skurjeni at the beginning of 1960 in Paris; the next in the middle of 1961, and they actually first met, spent time together and became friends during the preparations for the artist’s solo exhibition in the French capital, in the Mona Lisa Gallery in 1962, when the writer signed the introductory essay for the catalogue. In Paris, Ivsic introduced Skurjeni to André Breton and the other Surrealists, and the exhibition was accompanied by a number of important reviews in the press; it received very positive notices from, for example, José Pierre and Jean-Philippe Salabreuil. In 1963 Radovan Ivsic played a part in the organisation of Skurjeni’s exhibition in the famed Rudolf Zwirner Gallery in Cologne, once again writing the foreword to the catalogue. Ivsic’s book Theatre (Zagreb, 1983) contains reproductions of a number of Skurjeni drawings. Radovan Ivsic is the owner of a noteworthy collection of paintings, drawings and prints of the master, including a number of Skurjeni masterpieces that have never before been exhibited in this country (Acrobats, 1961; Shepherd of Reptiles and Other Wild Beasts, 1962; My Dream about What Happens in Paris in the Early Dawn, 1962; Transparent Stump, 1962; Two Steps from the Eiffel Tower, 1962 and others). Hence the title of the exhibition: An Unknown Skurjeni. Accordingly, this presentation is very important for an understanding of the overall significance, thematic diversity and poetic range of the painter’s work. The project is accompanied by a monograph-catalogue signed by Radovan Ivsic. Evoking numerous events of 45 years and more ago, recalling the diverse happenings, experiences and people, he is able to contextualise Skurjeni’s art in coordinates in which it takes on new meaning. Finally, this is a major moment for Croatian art and culture, because an authentic and genuine Surrealist is commenting on phantasmagoric painting from a Surrealist point of view, on the luminosity of the dream, its visionariness, poetry and liberty. Catalogue Radovan Ivšić: SKURJENI (translated into French and English) 220x250 mm, 96 pages, 69 colour reproductions, 18 black and white reproductions Price: 60 kuna + p. and p.