oil on canvas mounted on plywood, 110.5 x 85.5 cm, signed and dated middle down, in black, "NIVES K-K (19)85/(19)86"

Nives Kavurić Kurtović represents a specific chapter of our art history that combines intimacy, surrealism, pop-art, and figuration into a unique, dark, and unusual expression. She was born in Zagreb in 1938, where she also died in 2016. She gained her expression by synthesizing different styles and personal experiences and inspirations in the Master Workshop of Krsto Hegedušić. The painting "United without Socializing" is characteristic of her oeuvre. Dissolved, grotesque figures, with deformed faces and painted in translucent applications of pale colors, they remind us of a wedding photo because of the veil on the head of the largest, female, figure. All the characters that gather around the female figure with a veil could represent the family that marriage presupposes. But this is not a picture of happiness and harmony, but even the character next to it and the creature (probably a child) on her breasts are like demons that haunt and mentally exhaust the bride. This painting reveals the other side of the family idyll imposed as a standard aspiration by our society. The dissolution of form here corresponds to the dissolution of the individual psyche within imposed frameworks. Consequently, the painting also reveals the rotten foundations of society, points to the hell that family life often represents (most often to women), and thus, through the prism of personal psyche, acts as a scream of protest. Characteristic of this author, the dark picture of life is titled with a black-humored play on words in which the institution of the family negates and annuls the very root of the word "united", which suggests unity, collaboration, or a shared vision. With this painting, the artist seems to say that everyone is alone in their mental dungeon. FG

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