References

Vinko Zlamalik, Bela Čikoš Sesija – initiator of symbolism in Croatia (monograph), JAZU and DPU, Zagreb, 1984. Tonko Maroević, Bela Csikos – retrospective (catalog), Art Pavilion, Zagreb, 2012. Lada Bošnjak , Bela Csikos Sessia - in catalogue of the exhibition The demon of modernity. Visionary painters at the dawn of the brief century, Marsilio Editori, Venice, 2015. Petra Vugrinec , Paintings in the palace of the Department for Worship and Instruction - in the exhibition catalogue History and art on the walls of the palace at Opatička 10 in Zagreb, Klovićevi dvori Gallery, 2020, pp. 15 - 67

oil on canvas glued on panel, 49 x 34 cm, signed and dated lower right, in brown, "B. Cikos - Sesia 2.1925"

Research information

The piece is a post quem study made after a decorative painting that Čikoš Sesija created as a commission for the Croatian Institute of History in Opatička 10 around 1900. "Heracles and Antaeus" is one of the subjects that Čikoš painted for the Pompeian room, in which he worked alongside Ivan Tišov.

In the opus of Bela Čikoš, there is a series of paintings dedicated to legends from Greek mythology. Among them are two with the scene of Hercules' fight with the monster Antaeus, the son of the goddess Gaia (earth). The legend says that the fight was difficult and prolonged, and that Hercules defeated Antaeus only when he lifted him into the air and separated him from his mother Gaia (earth) who could no longer renew his strength. For the first time, Čikoš staged their fight in 1892, just before leaving for painting improvement in Munich. He painted it in the Upper Town palace of the then Department of Worship and Education, now the Croatian Institute of History. This is a wall decoration executed in oil paints on plaster. It is located on the south wall of the famous Pompeiian Room on the first floor of the palace, where it symbolizes the ideal of humanistic education by ancient icon and forms a kind of prologue to the artistic presentation of Croatian history and culture, which is comprised by the impressive painterly achievements of Čikoš and other leaders of the Croatian visual modern age which decorate - apart from the Pompeiian Hall - also the Gold and Renaissance Hall of the same palace. About thirty years after the wall painting of the Hercules and Antaeus battle and a crushing engagement in the execution of paintings for the Gold and Renaissance Hall, which lasted intermittently for about ten years (1898 - 1909), Bela Čikoš Sesija again immersed himself in the deep metaphorical meaning of Hercules' victory over the "invincible" Antaeus and painted it in oil paints on canvas a fresh, significantly more dynamic and interpretatively more modern composition of the two fighters of the ancient world. The unreal space of battle is deepened by landscape, the color is accentuated by the fluttering red cloak, and the contour outlining of the body is absent and the whole scene is more freely painted and also more directly interpreted. The oil painting "Hercules and Antaeus Fight" from 1925 is another proof that Čikoš's painting commitment to Croatian visual modernism is as pioneering and unavoidable as that of Bukovac, Medović, Vidović and, as Tonko Maroević writes, is also more exclusive as it took on the impossible, wishing to find a visual correlate of borderline states and a visual sign of the beyond. (B.R.P.)

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