28. Herd Departure [1922.]

In Gabriel Jurkić's painting the motif is predominantly the nature of the Herzeg-Bosnian landscape; the Livno and Kupres fields surrounded by high and harsh winter mountains under whose peaks flocks of sheep usually graze or cows gather at waterholes during the summer months. From this natural nursery of motifs, Jurkić has also panoramically depicted the Dinaric massif with Troglav, under which he placed a shepherd with sheep in the early pre-spring pasture. He painted it in 1922, at the peak of his painting career in Zagreb, during which he held two key exhibitions of his landscapes in the Zagreb Salon Ulrich, which so thrilled the Zagreb audience that he sold out 226 paintings exhibited then during their holding.* In Jurkić's more than six-decade-long creative life, other themes and motives are, of course, represented. For instance, he made a respectable stock of sacral and portrait painting, as well as Mediterranean landscapes. But the real truth is that he dedicated his painting destiny mostly to the panoramic views of the natural beauty of the Livno region, which is the most valued part of his oeuvre. The offspring of a distinguished Livno immigrant family from the Croatian coast, Jurkić - with his spiritual habitus and civilizational context, education in Zagreb and Vienna (1906 – 1911), and exhibiting presence in Croatian visual life from 1911 to 1934 not only was an undisputed participant in the Croatian visual modern, but is a painter who greatly and permanently enriched it. BRP

References

Ivanka Reberski, Gabriel Jurkić (monograph), School Book, Zagreb, 2008., p. 369; Ivanka Reberski, Spaces and reasons for Gabriel Jurkić's creative exaltations, Vijenac, Zagreb, no. 576, March 31, 2016.

Dimensions

width 40 cm, height 23 cm

Description

oil on cardboard, signed and dated lower right, in red and blue, "G. J. 1922."

Research information

The work was most likely exhibited at the exhibition "Winter", Collective exhibition of Gabriel Jurkić in Ullrich's salon 19. XI. / 1. XII. 1922., Zagreb.

Dating

1922.

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