References

Veno Zlamalik, Memorial Collection Bela Csikos Sesia, Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters, HAZU, ZAGREB, 1976.

oil on canvas mounted on plywood, 34.5 x 25.5 cm, signed and dated lower right, in yellow, "B. ČIKOŠ - S 2.1928."

After his painting studies at the Vienna Academy, Čikoš returned to Zagreb in 1892 and, as a freshly graduated painter with a specialization in historical painting, joined the leading figures of the Croatian visual modern - Vlaho Bukovac and Mato Celestin Medović – in creating paintings for the walls of the Upper Town palace of the Department of Worship and Education (now the Croatian Institute of History). For the famous Pompeian Room on the first floor of the palace, Čikoš made a painting titled The Battle of Hercules and Antaeus using oil paints on stucco, which symbolizes the ideal of humanistic education through ancient iconography. The art renewal of the palace was ordered by the head of the department, Izidor Kršnjavi, who did not stop with this first commission when it came to Čikoš, but immediately arranged for the young painter to spend several months studying in Italy. Over the course of 1893, the artist traveled all over Italy, continually painting landscapes and ancient sites. His work in Campania, in its center Naples, nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum, proved to be particularly important for his later painting creativity. It was this southern region that first inspired him to develop his suggestive luminism and mystical narrative in a more modern direction, closer to plein air expression and painting in lighter colors. The painting Tombstone Monument in Pompeii, created in Zagreb in 1928 according to a sketch from the aforementioned trip, is an excellent example of Čikoš's unpretentious "landscapism". The painting was executed with glazing color applications and a tonally tuned palette, faithfully and spiritually depicting the quiet cemetery environment and the old stone building of Pompeiian tombstone monument. It is worth mentioning that Čikoš brought back to Zagreb a substantial number of drawings and a smaller number of oil landscapes from Italy. A significant part of this drawn artistic material, as well as oil paintings, is today cataloged in the editions of the Bela Čikoš Sesija Memorial Collection at the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts or in catalogs of private collections. However, a considerable number of Čikoš’s works from Campania that have been documented in photographs are still only known to us through black-and-white photographs, and are considered lost. It is a fortunate circumstance for the future anthology of Croatian visual modernism that Artmark's Zagreb team is largely able to find and present these works to the public. BRP

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